Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

Local Government Reform

Dr. Dickson Mabon: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland when he will make a further statement on the recent representations made to him by various local authorities, religious bodies and others on his proposals for the reform of local government in Scotland.

Sir Gilmour: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will make a statement on the Government's plans for the reorganisation of local government.

Mr. Adam Hunter: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what further representations he has received regarding the division of Fife, arising from the reform of local government proposals for Scotland; and if he will make a statement.

Lieut.-Colonel Colin Mitchell: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether, in view of the representations made to him since the publication of the White Paper on the reform of local government in Scotland, he intends to modify the structural proposals made in the White Paper.

Sir F. Maclean: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he has come to a conclusion on an alternative local government structure for the west of Scotland, following submissions by the county councils concerned and by the

Convention of Royal Burghs; and if he will make a statement.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Gordon Campbell): Since the White Paper was published in February I have continued discussions with the local authority associations.
Two alternative structures for the proposed West Region have been put to me. It has also been represented, contrary to the Wheatley Royal Commission's recommendation, that Fife should form a separate region; and those concerned with the Western Isles—Lewis, Harris, the Uists and Barra—have asked for the same status as Orkney and Shetland. A number of proposals for additional districts have also been made.
After considering all these representations most carefully I have concluded that, looking to the future, we ought to adhere to the White Paper proposals for the West Region, and for Fife where we reached the same conclusions as the Wheatley Commission. As regards the Western Isles we have decided that they should have the same special status as Orkney and Shetland as a most-purpose authority.
We propose to maintain the present number of districts in the eight mainland regions but to make some boundary changes. I am circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT an indication of these changes, which include the transfer of Newport, Tayport and adjacent parishes from the Dundee district to North Fife, and also my conclusions on some other matters on which I have received representations.
A letter is being sent to the local authority associations today about these decisions, informing them of all the boundary changes, and I am making copies of it available in the Library.

Dr. Mabon: I think that we are all grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's statement but it does not completely cover the point made about the representations of various religious bodies, particularly the Catholic Church and the Church of Scotland, in relation to education provision, and I should welcome a further statement on that.
The right hon. Gentleman may recall that he indicated to the Leader of the House during Business questions that he would be willing to accept, or perhaps


be sympathetic to, the proposition that we should have a debate on this matter on the Floor of the House. I strongly urge the right hon. Gentleman to lend his weight to that request so that we may have the debate during the second week after we return from tile recess.

Mr. Campbell: On the first question, I replied in a Written Answer some days ago to the point about representation by religious denominations and made it clear that we do not intend to change the present principle. I think that that has been accepted by all those who have written in about it. It all started because this matter was raised at a meeting with my noble Friend and she invited the Churches to write in. But that has been settled, and I replied on that matter some time ago.
On the second point, I shall indeed keep in touch with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to see whether a debate can be arranged, but I can make no promise.

Sir J. Gilmour: Would my right hon. Friend agree that the Clan Campbell is held in some disregard in certain parts of Scotland and this will be felt keenly in the same way in Fife as a result of what he has said? Would my right hon. Friend now agree that the evidence that was given to the Wheatley Commission by the Scottish Office on the effects of cross-estuarial planning has been shown to be entirely wrong by facts that have been made known to him, and will he please acknowledge that?

Mr. Campbell: It was the Wheatley Royal Commission in 1969 which made the basic recommendation on the structure for the regions, which included the suggestion that Fife should be divided. A number of clans represented on that Wheatley Royal Commission would also be included with the Clan Campbell. It had a distinguished membership which included two present Members of this House.
As regards the estuaries, I do not consider that evidence has been put forward which would change the considerations which influenced the Wheatley Commission and the Government about the structure, in particular the two Firths, the

Forth and the Tay, and the fact that the bridges crossing them bring both sides of the Firths together.

Mr. Hunter: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his statement will be a very serious disappointment to many people in Fife? Would he not agree that Fife is a natural geographical and manageable unit to be a region of local government? How many representations did he receive from organisations and individuals in the County of Fife? I and my colleagues in the rest of Fife have received thousands of postcards expressing people's dislike of being divided. Will not the right hon. Gentleman reconsider the position? Is he not aware that even Edinburgh City is not too happy about having Fife tacked on to it in the new local government region?

Mr. Campbell: I am to reply to another Question about the number of representations received. I agree that it is distasteful to divide an ancient kingdom, and that was the dilemma. The sentiment and traditional feelings of allegiance to Fife are very strong but, for the many reasons summarised in paragraph 750 of the Wheatley Report, one has to put those on one side and weigh against them the very important factors for the future. As regards the consultants' document, the main thing which it brought out was something I knew already—that Fife County Council is a very efficient unit of local government. But it would not continue under any reorganisation of local government.

Lieut.-Colonel Mitchell: By what date will it no longer be possible to effect changes or amendments to the boundaries?

Mr. Campbell: The proposals which were in the White Paper and have been the subject of consultation in the following months, and on which I have now made some further announcements, are of course the proposals on which the Bill is to be based. We shall introduce the Bill into Parliament, clearly not this Session but, we hope, soon afterwards. We would hope to get as much agreement as possible. I am glad to say that on the adjustment of boundaries a good deal of agreement has been reached locally.

Sir F. Maclean: Leaving aside Clan Campbell, does my right hon. Friend realise that his statement will give very little pleasure in the western region?

Mr. Campbell: I recognise, as does my hon. Friend, that the western region poses very difficult problems, but there has been general agreement by all those who have considered it that it should be as large as it is.

Mr. Millan: No.

Mr. Campbell: The counties which put forward the alternative scheme which I have been considering with consultants put forward an idea of only four districts instead of the 13 which we were proposing, but they, too, accepted that this area as a whole should be a region. But the problem is how to arrange the administration within that region so that it can be most effective.

Mr. Ross: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he marred the possibility of change by statements which I thought ill-advised in the issue of his White Paper—that he would not accept any changes at that time? Since then, he has seen local authorities. It is only fair to those in the western region which he mentioned to say that they put forward a second alternative only because they felt that it would be unwise to go forward with the same thing. The districts which he put forward were very much different in powers from the existing districts.
When these proposals are embodied in a Bill, will the right hon. Gentleman make it clear that until the Bill becomes law, in the run-up to it and in the discussions on it, he will still be prepared to be persuaded by representations and certainly by Members of Parliament in respect of changes? He will be aware that we have had no debate on his White Paper. We hope that we will be able to debate that White Paper and these changes, which we will have to see in detail, before too long. It is very unfair to Parliament and to people with some responsibility here that our advice has not even been sought at present.
Have any changes been made in the number of districts, for instance, in Ayrshire, where we think it is very unfair that there should be districts of 100,000 people while in the right hon. Gentle-

man's own area there is a district of about 8,000 people?

Mr. Campbell: I shall deal with that last point straight away. Their functions are different. Where there are smaller districts, in the north and south of Scotland, those districts will have fewer functions.

Mr. Ross: indicated dissent.

Mr. Campbell: The right hon. Gentleman has not read the White Paper. They will not have planning functions.
As regards debate, the right hon. Gentleman himself is being less than fair. The Government proposed through the usual channels in the summer that there should be a debate in the Grand Committee on matter days on local government reorganisation and the White Paper. The Opposition naturally have a choice in these matters and they decided that they would prefer other subjects. That is why there has not been a debate up to now. It is unfair of the right hon. Gentleman to suggest that we have been behind in offering time for a debate on the White Paper of last February.
I tried to make it clear that the decisions as regards the White Paper were firm decisions of the Government but also that we were ready for full consultations, which have been taking place. I have had two full meetings with the local authority associations. The other Ministers in the Scottish Office have also had meetings. No one has complained that there has not been enough consultation, preparation to talk and preparedness to accept suggestions for alternatives.
But the local authority associations themselves made it clear to me at my last meeting with them on 19th November that they hoped that we would make our statement before the end of the year—as I have done, today—so that there should be certainty about the main structure, because until that is decided it is difficult to decide the consequential matters which should be decided before the Bill is introduced.

Mr. Brewis: Does my right hon. Friend's statement make any difference between the western region and the south-western region from what was proposed in the White Paper?

Mr. Campbell: Broadly, no. There are boundary adjustments which my hon. Friend will be able to see when he examines the documents in the Library concerning district boundaries, but broadly the boundary line between the two regions remains as proposed in the White Paper in February.

Mr. David Steel: Do not the right hon. Gentleman's proposals today constitute a second or supplementary White Paper? Would he be kind enough to place copies of these proposals in the Vote Office so that we can have them today before we go to our constituencies tomorrow?

Mr. Campbell: I assure the hon. Gentleman that they are complete, with explanations, in the documents in the Library. I made this arrangement specially so that hon. Members would be able to collect copies today as they leave the Chamber. The document in the Library contains details of all the changes I have announced today and the smaller ones which will be in the OFFICIAL REPORT tomorrow.

Mr. Gourlay: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that while a number of people in Fife may well be disappointed with his statement, a number of burghs in the county will be quite relieved at having escaped the burden of county council administration? Will he ensure that the social work services will be allocated to district authorities and that there is a more equitable representation on both district authorities and regional authorities throughout Scotland? I understand that the basis for calculating the representation on these authorities is very different between the central region and Fife.

Mr. Campbell: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there has been some difference of opinion within Fife about the future in that recently some boroughs where in favour of the proposals in the Wheatley White Paper. The social work services are intended to be with the regional councils, but the changes we made in the White Paper to the Wheatley recommendations have all been welcomed by a majority of people in Scotland. One of the changes we made was that the function of housing—a very important and large function covering many minor

subjects—should be moved from the regional council to the district authorities.

Mr. Lawson: On a point of order. It is 20 minutes past eleven o'clock. Should not this matter have been taken after Questions?

Mr. Campbell: Further to that point of order. I have replied to five Questions together. Had I made a statement at 12 o'clock I would have been cutting, into the time for private Members' Adjournment debates. Scottish Oral Questions are surely the time for me to make a short statement and to reply to oral supplementaries. To suggest otherwise is to turn the procedure upside down.

Mr. Gourlay: On a point of order. The Minister failed to reply to the part of my question about representation.

Mr. Campbell: I will bear in mind what the hon. Gentleman has said about that.

Mr. Ross: The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate the difficulty that the House is in about this matter. Will he immediately take up with the Leader of the House the necessity for having a debate on this subject in Government time? In view of his suggestion that it should have been debated before now, he will remember that we were awaiting the Government's White Paper on local government finance and he will be aware of the delay with the White Paper on housing.

Mr. Campbell: Yes, but it was only because the previous Government did not include the question of finance in the Wheatley Commission's remit and started to consider it only late in the day that it was not possible for a Green Paper to be available earlier. I have already given an assurance that I will take up with my right hon. Friend the question of an early debate.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid we must get on.

Following is the information:

LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM—SCOTLAND

I intend that the Bill on local government reform in Scotland should reflect the following conclusions.

1. STRUCTURE

The district authorities should be as listed in the White Paper, with the exception of the Lewis and Uist districts which will become part of the new Western Isles most-purpose authority.

2. FUNCTIONS

(i) Powers of district authorities

The proposal that the district authorities in the Highland, Borders and South-West Regions should have the same powers as the districts in the other regions is not accepted.

(ii) Water, sewerage and river purification

I have decided that all regional authorities should have responsibility for water supply, with special arrangements for administration in certain areas. Sewerage and river purification will also be administered by the regional authorities. I have taken into account the Report of the Scottish Water Advisory Committee which will be published shortly.

(iii) Harbours

Existing local authority harbours to be transferred to the regional authorities to administer as part of their responsibility for transportation matters; harbours at present operating outside local government will remain independent.

(iv) Other functions

Other functional responsibilities should remain as set out in the White Paper.

3. BOUNDARIES

I have decided to make about 20 boundary changes including those affecting Tain, part of the district council area of Lower Deeside, Newport-on-Tay and Tayport, Linlithgow, Newcastleton and Lochmaben, thus accepting about one-quarter of the suggestions which have been made to me. Some others, while having merit, could not be adopted because of the absence of suitable existing administrative boundaries: these will be remitted for early consideration by the proposed Boundary Commission.

4. COMMUNITY COUNCILS

Local communities will be given the opportunity to form community councils which will not, however, be a third tier of local government. They will not have specific statutory duties or statutory sources of finance. District authorities will be required to prepare schemes enabling community councils to be established in their areas.

5. OTHER MATTERS

A substantial measure of agreement has been reached with the local authority associations on many other matters which will require to be provided for in legislation. These include the appointment of a Staff Commission, joint consideration by existing authorities of transitional problems and machinery for dealing with the allocation of local authority property to the new authorities.

Unemployment

Mr. David Steel: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what further proposals he will now make to reduce unemployment in Scotland.

Mr. Millan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what further measures he proposes to take to stimulate employment in Scotland.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: Within the field for which the Scottish Office is responsible my Department has been in constant touch with local authorities about job-creating public works since my announcement of a special works scheme on 13th July. Projects amounting to over £60 million in Scotland have so far been approved and proposals under this scheme are still being considered.

Mr. Steel: Will the Secretary of State look at fields outside the responsibility of the Scottish Office and use his influence as Secretary of State on, for example, public corporations such as the B.B.C. regarding its programme of construction of transmitters, some of which is falling behind because the corporation says that it is short of investment money? Surely this is the sort of area which is within the right hon. Gentleman's wider responsibility for creating and improving employment and welfare in Scotland.

Mr. Campbell: The hon. Gentleman and I are together in thinking that the Secretary of State's job includes bringing influence to bear on his colleagues in all the fields which help Scotland. If the hon. Gentleman has individual projects or subjects in mind, lying within the responsibility of other departmental Ministers, I hope that he will put down Questions to them.

Mr. Millan: Is the Secretary of State aware that, apart from short-term measures to deal with the present appalling unemployment figures, many feel that there are long-term opportunities for Scotland in, for example, exploitation of North Sea oil and the deep water facilities of the Clyde but that what is lacking in this matter is a real sense of urgency on the part of the Government and, most particularly, the necessary decision-making by the Government, especially on


the exploitation of Hunterston? When will we have decisions from the Government instead of the endless paper studies which are all that we have had so far?

Mr. Campbell: I agree in principle with what the hon. Gentleman has said. On North Sea oil, a decision involving about £170 million was announced by a company last week. I have been much involved in the whole question of how North Sea oil can best be brought to shore and help Scotland. On the question of Hunterston, I cannot add to what my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry said in the debate last week.

Mr. Edward Taylor: Has my right hon. Friend heard the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at Question Time very recently making it clear that they have not closed their minds to the possibility of lower income tax and corporation tax rates for Scotland when regional employment premium is phased out? Would not this be a remarkable boost for Scotland? Is my right hon. Friend discussing this with his Cabinet colleagues?

Mr. Campbell: Many ideas are discussed with Cabinet colleagues, as I am sure my hon. Friend knows. He will no doubt be as glad as I am that such ideas are still open.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: Is the Secretary of State aware that we had hoped for a statement on the incentives given to industries within the special development areas but that so far we have seen no response from the Ministers concerned? Does the Secretary of State realise that there are a number of industries—of which I have given him six examples and there is one in my constituency of which I shall give him notice this morning—in which we cannot expand the labour force because of the lack of additional incentives? Is not this a practical proposition which could be adopted as soon as possible?

Mr. Campbell: The hon. Gentleman knows that this is a matter that both hon. Members and Ministers have discussed. This is not a very easy matter; it is complicated and is still being considered.

Divorce Law

Mr. Robert Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if, in view of

paragraph 22 of the Scottish Law Commission 1970–71 Annual Report, he is now prepared to assist in the reform of divorce law in Scotland.

Mr. Ronald King Murray: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what plans he has to introduce legislation to amend the divorce law of Scotland in accordance with the recommendations of the Scottish Law Commission in its Sixth Annual Report.

The Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Agriculture, Scottish Office (Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith): My right hon. Friend has no proposals for legislation on this subject.

Mr. Hughes: Is not the Minister aware of the very scathing comments made in paragraph 22 of the Scottish Law Commission's Report on the methods of trying to get divorce law reform through the House and of the criticisms of the very serious effects which delay is having on the Commission's proposals for family life? In the circumstances, does not the Minister feel that he has a responsibility to assist in getting some form of divorce reform through the House of Commons?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I am aware of the views expressed on the subject. I am also aware that the proposals for reform which were incorporated in the Bill which the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Robert Hughes) presented to the House proved to be highly controversial. It remains the Government's view that legislation on the subject, Which clearly raises many moral issues on which people have very strong convictions is more appropriate to a Private Member's Bill.

Mr. Hughes: Will the Minister bear in mind that even though these matters are controversial the Government should not run away from the very serious damage being done to family life in Scotland? I am asking the Government not to produce the legislation but to help by providing time to ensure that Private Members' Bills are not involved in hazards in the way that Government Bills are.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: The question of the time of the House is not for me. As for assistance by the Government in this matter, as the hon. Gentleman knows,


when he presented his Bill the Government authorised the Law Commission to assist him with it, and that was the correct thing to do.

Housing Construction

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many houses are expected to be completed in 1971; how many have been started since 1st January, 1971 to date; and how many are under construction.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: The relevant figures as at 30th September are given in the Housing Return for Scotland. 30th September, 1971. The figures for the whole year will not be known until we have the returns for the last quarter.

Mr. Hamilton: Is it not the case that the total completions will be down considerably in 1971 as compared with previous years and that the indications are that they will continue to decline? As one-quarter of the unemployed in Scotland are currently building trade workers, is not the crime compounded by the combination of these two facts?

Mr. Campbell: The number of completions in 1971 will have depended on the number of starts in 1969 and 1970. There may be some continuing turndown but, as I stated in the housing debate a few days ago, approvals are now turning upwards, so completions at some time to come should start rising again.

Mr. Grimond: The Secretary of State has been kind enough to write to me about the housing situation in Shetland. Will he bear in mind that we have a considerable chance now of increasing employment and even bringing back some population to the north of Scotland but that the housing situation is a handicap? Would he see whether approvals can be increased and exert pressure and bring what help he can to local authorities both to build new houses and to repair old ones?

Mr. Campbell: I am aware of the point and I shall do what I can to help.

Rural Bus Services

Lieut.-Colonel Colin Mitchell: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland

what is his policy towards the provision of public funds for bus services in North-East Scotland.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Under Section 34 of the Transport Act, 1968, Government grant at the rate of 50 per cent. is available to local authorities which incur expenditure for the provision, improvement or continuance of rural bus services. In addition the local authorities' share of the cost is taken into account in the calculation of rate support grant. Aberdeen County Council has taken an initiative, which we welcome, to work out a mutually satisfactory arrangement between the local authorities and the major bus operator in the North-East for the maintenance of essential rural bus services throughout the area.

Lieut.-Colonel Mitchell: Does my hon. Friend agree that the major operators regard these as services which are bound to run at a loss, so that in the end it becomes a question of whether this is another factor which is speeding rural depopulation?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I appreciate my hon. and gallant Friend's concern over this matter. It is significant that the services that have been proposed for assistance number 27 uneconomic routes at a cost of £148,000 a year. This indicates the concern of the local authority in the area to be of help in this matter.

Mr. Carmichael: While agreeing that the provisions of the Transport Act, 1968, were far reaching, may I ask the Minister to agree that things have changed radically even in the last three years and that the rate of depopulation of rural areas is speeding up? Will he consider with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment the possibility of reviewing the balance between local authority and national cost—in other words, increase the national grant for some services in view of the big burden that falls on some local authorities?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I have noted the hon. Gentleman's remarks. I appreciate the departmental involvement he had in this subject in the Labour Government. If he studies my reply he will see that the extent of Government financial assistance is quite large.

National Health Service (Brassieres)

Mr. William Hannan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is aware that retired pensioners who are exempt from charges for drugs by reason of their age are not similarly exempt from charges for special brassieres prescribed as an element of treatment under his National Health Service (Charges) (Scotland) Regulation, 1971; and if he will take steps to rectify this anomaly.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Education, Scottish Office (Mr. Hector Monro): My right hon. Friend is aware of the position. Any patient who suffers financial hardship can apply to the local social security office for a refund.

Mr. Hannan: Has the Minister looked into the method of assessment of applicants for these surgical appliances? Is he aware that people aged 65, whether or not they are retired, are eligible for exemption from charges for drugs? Why should retired pensioners of 65 not qualify for exemption from charges for surgical appliances in the way that people of 16, war pensioners, hospital in-patients and those in receipt of supplementary benefit are exempted? Does he agree that there is an anomaly here and will he look at the whole issue again?

Mr. Monro: Surgical clothing is generally worn in place of ordinary items of clothing, which the patient would buy anyway, whereas in the normal course the patient would not buy drugs. However, in view of the hon. Gentleman's representations I will, without commitment, look at the matter again and write to him.

Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh

Mr. Ewing: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has had regarding the conditions in Ward 7. Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh; and what action he proposes to take.

Mr. Monro: I have received representations from the Eastern Branch of the Scottish Spina Bifida Association and from seven Members of this House. I

recently visited the hospital and asked the hospital authorities to take steps to make alternative arrangements for patients in Ward 7. The South-Eastern Regional Hospital Board has now decided to withdraw patients from this ward and to make alternative facilities available from within existing resources with the least possible delay.

Mr. Ewing: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the decision to close Ward 7 will be welcomed by the parents of the patients in the ward and by the staff who have had to work in it under very difficult conditions? Has his attention been drawn to an article in the Daily Record of last Tuesday in which the consultant paediatric neurologist, Dr. Thomas Ingram, called for an inquiry into the affairs of the South-Eastern Regional Hospital Board, into the activities, or lack of activity, on the part of the board and the apparent indifference of the board to the needs of children? Will the Minister set up such an inquiry and see that if members of the board or others holding positions of responsibility are not fit to carry that responsibility, they will be relieved of it?

Mr. Monro: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks in the first part of his supplementary question. The important step now is to make sure that the changes which I have requested are made as soon as possible. I think that this will be far better done without an inquiry, which I do not propose to set up.

Mr. Clark Hutchison: Does my hon. Friend agree that there are in existence some very good plans proposed by the authorities concerned with the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh? Could they be implemented? When does he think that a start can be made to get them into operation so that the whole hospital can be improved?

Mr. Monro: The regional hospital board has set out its priorities for future building after 1972. My right hon. Friend and I will be considering the priorities very soon indeed and then we shall announce when the new rolling programme will start. There is, however, no question at all but that the replacement of the existing Hospital for Sick Children is at the top of the hoard's list.

Mr. Douglas: What oversight does the Minister intend to have over the alternative arrangements that are to be made immediately?

Mr. Monro: Day-to-day contact with the board.

Proportional Representation

Mr. Russell Johnston: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what consideration he has given to the introduction of proportional representation in the proposed reform of local government in Scotland.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: My right hon. Friend has no plans for such a change.

Mr. Johnston: Does the Minister agree that there should be the maximum opportunity for involvement in the new structure, both for individuals and minority groups, and that unless there is a change in the voting system a lot of talent will be lost to local government?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I agree with what the hon. Member says about the need for involvement. Indeed, we want as much involvement as possible. However, in the consultations that I have had with local authority associations and political parties I have not detected any desire for a change in the relative majority system of elections.

Wild Animals

Mr. Brewis: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland how frequently inspections are carried out of wild life parks and premises where wild animals are kept to ensure that such animals as wolves and brown bear do not escape, and again become indigenous to Scotland.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: An absolute duty to ensure that wild animals do not escape rests with those in charge of a wild life park or other such premises where animals are kept. In law a strict liability lies upon those in charge of such animals for any damage they may cause if they escape or get out of control.

Mr. Brewis: Has my hon. Friend seen a recent Press report that a giant turtle which escaped in Arbroath was, happily, recaptured a few days later? When will his Department recapture the wild boar which has been loose in Galloway for at least a year? Does my hon. Friend agree

that proper precautions should be taken to see that these ferocious creatures do not escape?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I confess that what happened in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) had escaped my notice. I was, however, aware of what had happened in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis) and I will certainly look into the representations he has made. I hope that at this festive season he will exclude reindeer from his strictures.

Sir F. Maclean: Is not the wild boar the symbol of the Clan Campbell?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: That is correct.

Transport Charges (Arran, Bute and Cumbrae)

Sir F. Maclean: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland when he will announce his policy for assistance over freight and passenger charges for Arran, Bute and Cumbrae.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: My review of policy in relation to sea transport services and subsidies will be completed as soon as possible. Meanwhile I note my hon. Friend's suggestion that, contrary to present arrangements, Government assistance might be extended to certain Clyde services.

Sir F. Maclean: Does my right hon. Friend realise that these islands of the Clyde are as much islands as any others and that it is a shame that they should be discriminated against compared with islands only a few miles further north?

Mr. Campbell: I accept that point. The Scottish Transport Group has not asked for assistance with the services and at present the customers are not being asked to meet their full cost.

School Milk

Mr. Buchan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what percentage of children in each of the local authorities which have completed an examination of all children have been certified so far as requiring milk on medical grounds.

Mr. Monro: With permission, I will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT the


figures available about the issue of certificates stating that the pupil's health requires that he should be provided with milk at school. So far as I am aware no authority has had all its primary pupils medically examined for this purpose or intends to do so.

Mr. Buchan: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the figures we have seen so far make a nonsense of the whole affair, with some schools having a take-up of over 90 per cent. and some with virtually no take-up at all? It is clear that there are no criteria to guide medical officers of health in this matter. Will the hon. Gentleman make it clear that no Scottish child need be deprived of milk if the local medical officer thinks that milk should be provided for good health?

Mr. Monro: We have always made it clear that the decision in each individual case depends on the professional judgment of the medical officer. Some variation between areas and schools is hound to arise. The answer to the hon. Gentleman's query on the preventive aspect is that we are not giving specific advice to medical officers but simply suggesting that in the exercise of their professional judgment in any particular case they may properly take into account any relevant preventive factors.

Dr. Miller: Does the hon. Gentleman have any method of monitoring the extent of radioactivity to which children might be exposed, so that if it rises above an unacceptable level milk can once again be supplied to them since it is a very good method of absorbing the rays?

Mr. Monro: Yes, indeed. The different authorities' areas in Scotland are being monitored for that very reason.

Mr. William Hamilton: Despite the present Government's promise at the last election to give more freedom to local authorities, can the hon. Gentleman say whether they have now all been whipped into line on this matter?

Mr. Monro: There are still two authorities that have the matter under discussion but otherwise all have now accepted the procedure of the 1947 Act, produced by the hon. Gentleman's Government, no doubt with the involvement

of the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross).

Following is the information:

Percentages of pupils in 7–11 years age-group in education authority schools who have medical certificates for free school milk are as follows:


EDUCATION AUTHORITY


Burghs


Aberdeen
6·63


Dundee
0·06


Edinburgh
2·11


Glasgow
11·08


Counties


Aberdeen
0·02


Angus
1·77


Argyll
0·08


Ayr
Not available


Banff
1·06


Berwick
0·64


Bute
0·18


Caithness
5·06


Clackmannan
0


Dumfries
1·50


Dunbarton
Not available


East Lothian
0·07


Fife
4·12


Inverness
0·15


Kincardine
0·93


Kirkcudbright
0·05


Lanark
40·20


Midlothian
14·60


Moray and Nairn
0·14


Orkney
1·06


Peebles
4·41


Perth and Kinross
0·12


Renfrew
0·35


Ross and Cromarty
0


Roxburgh
2·13


Selkirk
1·43


Stirling
0·97


Sutherland
0


West Lothian
0·83


Wigtown
0·93


Zetland
0

Mr. Robert Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland which local authorities in Scotland are carrying out examinations of children in primary schools in order to issue milk on medical grounds.

Mr. Monro: The Education (Milk) Act does not require an education authority to have pupils examined for this purpose. The authority's duty is to provide milk for primary pupils over the age of seven in respect of whom there is in force a certificate by a medical officer of the authority stating that their health requires that they should be provided with milk at school.

Mr. Hughes: Does not the Secretary of State's recent advice that milk may be


provided on preventive grounds make it necessary for him to issue a circular encouraging all local authorities to have the most searching medical examination made of their pupils so that milk can be provided to the maximum number of children who need this nutrient?

Mr. Monro: The hon. Gentleman is not correctly stating the position. I wish that he and his hon. Friends would remember that under the 1968 Act no secondary school children receive school milk whether for medical reasons or otherwise.

European Economic Community

Mr. Strang: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what further representations he has received from the inshore fishing industry regarding the Common Market negotiations; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I have discussed this question fully with representatives of the industry at several recent meetings. After their last discussion on 15th December the representatives said they were satisfied with the outcome of the negotiations and with the assurance of further consultation which I gave.

Mr. Strang: While undoubtedly many fishermen are relieved that the length of our shore protected by the 12-mile limit is substantially better than they originally feared, is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is a great deal of apprehension about the position at the end of the 10-year period? That concern was sharply increased by the disgraceful refusal of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the debate last week to tell us precisely what the legal position is as regards the end of the 10-year period. Is it the case that at the end of 10 years the prevailing policy will be the common fisheries policy and that notwithstanding what comes out of the review other European countries will be able to veto all the proposals we might put forward for the retention of the 12-mile limit?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: The review procedure we have agreed for the end of the initial period is one that is open and will have full regard to the social, economic and conservation aspects of the fishing industry round our coasts at that time. I

would emphasise what my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said absolutely clearly in the debate at the end of the last week: that what will happen in practice is that no future Government could possibly be forced into arrangements which in their judgment failed to safeguard our vital fishing interests.

Mr. Edward Taylor: But if no satisfactory agreement is arrived at after 10 years, what limits do we apply off Britain?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: That is a matter to be agreed at the end of the 10-year period. It is absolutely clear that in practice—and I call in aid none less than the Leader of the Opposition when he spoke about the constitutional aspects of the Community—it is far more important to examine the way in which the community works and operates when it becomes a living constitution. It was on that basis that my right hon. and learned Friend was quite rightly able to give the full assurances he gave the House a week ago,

Mr. Ross: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the feeling is that as far as they go they might be all right but only for 10 years? What we are concerned about is the position after 10 years—not the scope of the review but the legal position thereafter. When there is no agreement at that time, does power of veto rest not with Britain but with the others who may wish to return to the unrestricted limits?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I never expect to persuade the right hon. Gentleman of this, because I know that he was not looking for success in the negotiations—

Mr. Ross: The Government did not get it.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: The matter has been fully explained and discussed with the fishing industry which accepts the position that in practical terms—and it is practice that counts—its interests are safeguarded at the end of 10 years. As my right hon. and learned Friend said very clearly at the end of last week, if agreement cannot be reached in such a vital matter as this, as in any other vital matter, it calls in question the future of the Community itself.

State Industrial Holding Company

Mr. Douglas: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will request his economic advisory section to undertake a feasibility study of the possibility of setting up a state-financed Scottish industrial holding company.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: There is nothing I can add to what my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry said about the Government's attitude to the establishment of State-financed holding companies in the debate on a Motion on public ownership in the name of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) on 10th December.—[Vol. 827, c. 1687–1777.]

Mr. Douglas: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that the Minister said exactly nothing in that debate? Is not the right hon. Gentleman falling down in his duty and responsibility here? We have a magnificent opportunity to exploit the potentialities of North Sea oil and gas. The formation of a State holding company would go a long way towards ensuring that Scotland gets the benefits of the full exploitation of those resources. Will the right hon. Gentleman do something about it?

Mr. Campbell: I do not accept that my hon. Friend said nothing in that debate. I do not wish to repeat it all here at Question Time. Of course, there are great opportunities now in North Sea oil, as I have said over several months, but the possible advantages of a State-owned holding company have not so far made themselves apparent.

Horserace Totalisator and Betting Levy Boards Bill

Mr. Edward Taylor: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what discussions he has had with betting licence authorities in Scotland in connection with the Horserace Totalisator and Betting Levy Boards Bill.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: None, Sir.

Mr. Taylor: Is my hon. Friend aware that under Clause 3 one of the State betting shops could be established in an area where the local licensing authority had refused an identical application from

a commercial betting shop? Does not that call for a great deal of thought? Is my hon. Friend reconsidering the future of the Bill?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I have met representatives of betting interests in Scotland and I am considering their representations. It is not intended that the Tote should be able to open betting offices indiscriminately but only, as is provided under Clause 3, under a certificate issued by the Government-appointed members of the Betting Levy Board who, in issuing the certificates, will have regard to the criteria that are approved by the Government.

Rate Rebates

Mr. Gourlay: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if in view of the recent increase in retirement pension, he will now make the consequential adjustments in the income levels required to qualify for a maximum rate rebate.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: A draft order for this purpose was laid before Parliament on 14th December.

Mr. Gourlay: I appreciate the speed with which the hon. Gentleman made the order after I tabled a Question. Is he aware that the increase will hardly match the rising cost of living and the ever-increasing rate burdens arising from the Government's policies? Will he therefore undertake to make an annual review of these income levels?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I am grateful for the first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question. He must realise that he is dealing with a Government that are always responsive to real needs The income limits are being changed for pensioners and non-pensioners alike. Over and above that, we are proposing to increase the addition for each dependent child by 50p to £2·50. It has been £2 a week since 1968. This matter is looked at when other benefits are raised.

Overspill Housing (Subsidy)

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the overspill receiving authorities at present in receipt of Government subsidy, the total cost in each year of such subsidies since the operation of the Housing


and Town Development (Scotland) Act, 1957; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: With permission, I will circulate the information in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I have no statement to make.

Mr. Brown: That makes it difficult—

Mr. Speaker: Order. A supplementary question is not compulsory.

Mr. Brown: It is Christmas, Mr. Speaker, and I do not think you should try to deny me the pleasure. Ls the Secretary of State aware of the 1970 report of the Glasgow Medical Officer of Health drawing attention to the reversal, for the first time for 60 years, in the trends of increasing height and weight of schoolchildren? That reversal is ascribed to the overspill policy. Will the right hon. Gentleman initiate an immediate and urgent inquiry into the social and economic implications of overspill generally?

Mr. Campbell: The reason I have to circulate the answer in the OFFICIAL REPORT is that it contains the names of about 30 towns and about 20 figures. As regards overspill, the new housing expenditure subsidy and the arrangements in the new Bill will greatly assist overspill both for receiving authorities and for Glasgow.

Following is the information:

1. Overspill receiving authorities in of Government subsidy:
Alloa
Alva
Arbroath
Barrhead
Bathgate
Bonnyrigg and Lasswade
Denny and Dunipace
Dumfries
Dunbar
Forfar
Galashiels
Galston
Grangemouth
Haddington
Hamilton
Hawick
Invergordon
Inverkeithing
Inverness County
Irvine
Johnstone
Kilsyth
Kirkintilloch
Midlothian County
Newmilns and Greenholm
Peebles

Peebles County
Renfrew County
Selkirk
Stevenston
Stewarton
West Lothian County
Whitburn

2. Overspill subsidies paid to receiving authorities:



£


1960–61
16,128


1961–62
24,696


1962–63
42,399


1963–64
77,640


1964–65
132,426


1965–66
119,532


1966–67
140,931


1967–68
154,182


1968–69
156,289


1969–70
155,204


1970–71
173,698

New Towns (Board Appointments)

Mr. Lambie: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what immediate plans the Government have to seek to change the New Towns (Scotland) Acts, with a view to changing the present practice of appointing nominated persons to the new town boards with elections.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: None, Sir.

Mr. Lambie: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the unrest and anger being expressed in the Irvine New Town area because of the dictatorial attitudes of the new town board? It is the only new town area in Britain superimposed on existing viable communities. For example, the town of Irvine is celebrating its 600th anniversary next year. Because of the difference in policies causing conflict between the local councils and the new town board, will the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that for the Irvine New Town he will amend the Acts to allow elections for the appointment of members to the board?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I refute what the hon. Gentleman says about the board being dictatorial. His assertion is totally unwarranted. I cannot give him the assurance he wants. All new town development corporations—and this one is no exception—include some elected councillors. Local authorities which continue to discharge statutory functions in the new towns are, as elsewhere, always consulted regarding a corporation's development proposals. The hon. Gentleman should bear that in mind as well.

Oceanspan

Mr. Lawson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what judgment he has formed on the commercial potential for Scotland of Ocean span; and what steps he is taking to realise this potential.

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what progress he has made in discussions concerning the project, Oceanspan.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: I had a useful further discussion with representatives of the Scottish Council, Development and Industry, on 3rd December. The concepts embodied in the Oceanspan report need further development before individual projects can be founded upon them and the Scottish Office is cooperating with the council to this end.

Mr. Lawson: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is perhaps the most imaginative scheme that has been brought forward for many years and that perhaps one of the greatest potentials that Scotland has is that it lies astride the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea? If we are to gain advantages by our entry into the E.E.C., which many of us are very much in favour of, we would expect the Government to push ahead strenously with this most imaginative project.

Mr. Campbell: I have been supporting the committee which produced this report for the last three years, including its original interim report two and a half years ago, which I welcomed, and its first and second Oceanspan reports. I agree that this is an imaginative proposal. That is why I and the Scottish Office are doing all we can to translate it into action.

Mr. Hamilton: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that it is a reflection on the Scottish Office that such an imaginative proposal should be put by an outside body? Should not this kind of long-term thinking be done in the Scottish Office?

Mr. Campbell: I do not accept that. Long-term thinking on these lines has been going on in the Scottish Office which has been co-operating with the Scottish Council, which set up this body. There

has been co-operation in this matter between the Government and the Scottish Council.

Mr. Brewis: Is it not the case that similar projects have been put up in other parts of Europe? Is time therefore not of the essence?

Mr. Campbell: Yes, Sir. The Hunters-ton Development Company has been set up specially to use some of the expertise which has already been applied on the Continent.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: Oceanspan depends by definition on the improvement of the harbours in the West, particularly Hunterston. Why is the Clyde Port Authority not being encouraged by the Scottish Office to make application under Sections 4 and 6 of the Harbours Act for loans to get on with the building of the general harbour which the right hon. Gentleman approved after the Hunterston inquiry?

Mr. Campbell: I made the planning decision which gave approval to all that is required and it is now up to the various other bodies, including the Clyde Port Authority, to take the necessary action. All these bodies are anxious to get ahead with these proposals.

Housing Returns

Dr. Dickson Mabon: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland why he refuses to publish the figures of houses in the public sector, approved but not started, in the quarterly housing return published shortly after the end of each three months.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: As I told the hon. Gentleman on 22nd November, this information is already published in Appendices I to IV of the quarterly Housing Return for Scotland.—[Vol. 826, c. 271.]

Dr. Mabon: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that there is a difference in time in getting these returns? This is why in my Question, despite tautology, I put the words
after the end of each three months.
Why do we not get in the regular return—we shall receive the next one in January for the last three months—this one item? I realise that it is repeated later, but why cannot we have it more immediately?

Mr. Campbell: Since the first quarter of 1970 figures have been brought together in a single table in Appendix IV of the return. This figure has been available under this system since the beginning of 1967. I will look into the question of delay.

Mr. Edward Taylor: Is not my right hon. Friend aware that the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) is somewhat embarrassed because the remarkable drop in starts and approvals which took place when he was responsible for housing has been overtaken by the increase in starts and approvals under the present Government?

Mr. Campbell: I rejoice with my hon. Friend that approvals for houses in the public sector for the months ahead are now on the upward turn.

Mr. Strang: Why does the Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Bill contain no provision designed to encourage the building of houses to let or for sale?

Mr. Campbell: I do not accept that. We shall be considering the Bill in detail after the recess. The Bill provides a framework in which house-building where it is needed in Scotland in the public sector can be given every encouragement. It also provides for the encouragement of housing for rent and house-building for home ownership.

Technical and Commercial Further Education

Mr. William Hannan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has now considered the Hudson Report on Technical and Commercial Further Education; and, in view of the raising of the school-leaving age, if he will take steps to implement the proposals in that report.

Mr. Monro: My right hon. Friend is now considering the comments of interested bodies on the report, which he commended to their attention in June. He hopes to announce his conclusions early in the New Year.

Mr. Hannan: I appreciate that answer as far as it goes but will the hon. Gentleman assure us that the Department is seized of the urgency of these proposals in the light of the increasing number of

unemployed youth, highlighted in the Daily Record yesterday, and of the need for rationalisation of the numerous courses in further education?

Mr. Monro: The Government do appreciate the importance of the report, which is very valuable. We are urgently considering the recommendations we have received from outside bodies and will announce our conclusions shortly.

North Sea Oil (Investment in Scotland)

Mr. Russell Johnston: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether, in view of the lack of investment in Scotland and the need to stimulate new enterprise, he will consider taking steps to establish a development corporation financed by a half share of Government revenues accruing from oil exploitation in Scottish waters.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: No, Sir. Important investment decisions have already been taken by Scottish and other companies in consequence of and associated with North Sea oil developments. These and other initiatives in this field are of great value to the Scottish economy. Revenues of any magnitude are unlikely to accrue for some time.

Mr. Johnston: Surely the Secretary of State must by now be aware that, at a time when the Scottish economy is severely depressed, a great many people in Scotland consider it possible that many of the found money revenues which the Government will get from oil—it will be a very large sum—will probably bypass Scotland completely? The establishment of a corporation of the sort I suggest would ensure that Scotland benefited. Similar ideas have been floated by the Scottish Council. Will the right hon. Gentleman look seriously at this matter?

Mr. Campbell: We have the same objective in view—to make sure that Scotland gets the maximum benefit from the North Sea oil development. But revenues of any size are unlikely to come in for some time ahead and the infrastructure and other assistance which the Government can give are needed now.

Mr. Ross: Surely this development means that we are going to be involved in considerable additional expenditure.


Surely it is wrong to say that the revenues are very small. Was not a figure of £37 million quoted for licences over the whole area? Since we are concerned about the future, would it not be better to make plans now to ensure that the financial benefits from this new resource accrue directly to Scotland? We should not wait until it is too late.

Mr. Campbell: I will bear in mind what the right hon. Gentleman has said. The Government are working with the companies engaged in this development and with the Scottish Council, which has put forward its ideas. We are determined to do what is most helpful now in order to ensure that this development is of benefit to Scotland.

Derelict Land

Mr. Brewis: asked the Secretary of State for Scotand what is the total acreage of derelict land in Scotland at the present time; and what perecntage of that figure is represented by acreage cleared in 1970.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: A rough estimate is that about 13,000 acres might justify reclamation. The present rate of approval of clearance schemes is about 1,000 acres a year; in 1970 schemes covering 329 acres were completed.

Mr. Brewis: Can my hon. Friend tell me what is the average cost of clearance per acre?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Not off the cuff. I will write to my hon. Friend.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Buchan: On a point of order. I have given you notice. Mr. Speaker, that I intended to raise this matter. I wish to refer to what happened at the begining of Question Time when—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I anticipated that that was what the hon. Gentleman would refer to. Nothing happened which was out of order. Whether one agrees with what happened or not is a different matter, but it was not out of order. I must be firm with the hon. Gentleman. He must find other ways of making his point.

Mr. Buchan: With respect, Mr. Speaker, it is your responsibility, duty and prerogative to protect the procedures of the House, and, in my submission, the time of back-bench Members was not protected earlier this morning.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Chair has absolutely no control over how a Minister answers or groups Questions. That is the Minister's responsibility. If the hon. Gentleman wants to complain about what happened, he must find some other way of doing it.

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: Further to the point of order. I know that it is difficult to keep within order on this point, but there is one factor which is a bit unusual about today's business. Today the House rises for the Christmas Recess, and there has been an excellent attendance of Scottish Members. The unusual factor is that any statement made today would intrude into the time of private Members—and I am doing that now. Yesterday the time of the House was spent on debating the Island of Rockall Bill, which is hardly a burning issue in my constituency. Did any general discussions take place with you, Mr. Speaker, in these unusual circumstances?

Mr. Speaker: I sometimes wish that the Chair did control the business of the House, what is discussed and how long it is discussed, but it does not do so. These are not matters for me. They may be matters of serious complaint—I do not express an opinion about that—but they are not matters of order. Nothing happened today which was out of order.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: While, I hope, remaining in order, may I say that Questions were on the Order Paper today on a subject on which I had a short statement to make and it seemed the appropriate time to make it.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I cannot allow this matter to be discussed.

NORTHERN IRELAND

Mr. McMaster: On a point of order. May I seek your guidance and assistance, Mr. Speaker, for the protection of the


House? A mischievous article appeared in the Irish Times this morning suggesting that during the recess the Government intend to take important constitutional steps regarding Northern Ireland. You will be aware, Mr. Speaker, that I have been trying to get the Home Secretary to make a statement today. In view of the serious situation, will the Government make a statement on the situation?

Mr. Speaker: indicated dissent.

HEALTH EDUCATION (TELEVISION)

12.4 p.m.

Mr. Laurie Pavitt: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require television authorities to provide facilities for the purpose of transmitting programmes relating to health education.
In spite of its defects, our National Health Service offers the finest medical care and treatment in the world, but it remains curative. The next stage of development must inevitably be to move towards preventive medicine, and in that process health education and knowledge will play a vital part.
The purpose of my proposed Bill is to use the most effective of all the mass media to enlarge the scope and effectiveness of health education. It seeks to make advances towards the effective prevention of diseases with the consequence of colossal savings of the resources of the Health Service which are so severely strained to meet the present demand. I wish to make it abundantly clear that the Bill is for education and not propaganda, teaching and not preaching, and the spread of knowledge rather than the use solely of exhortation.
There is already a precedent. The B.B.C. gives some time for subjects of public importance to which the Government wish to draw attention. In the United States, no broadcasting station is licensed without a stipulation that at least 10 per cent. of all its advertising time must be given in the public service.
The proposed Bill will provide for a minimum of 15 minutes in total time to be allocated each week by both the B.B.C. and the I.T.A. and that this should be used by the Health Education Council to show features, films or a variety of short material designed to educate the public in health matters. The kind of thing I have in mind is to prevent illness rather than cure it; to improve the ability of people suffering from chronic illness or a disability to cope with their conditions; to promote health and safety at work and in the home. The problems arising from burns, cuts and poisons which mothers face, for example, could be alleviated by further information given by means of my proposed Bill.
The purpose of the Bill also is to cut through the bewilderment of many patients about their entitlement under the National Health Service and how they can take advantage of things like exemption from paying prescription charges; to explain to patients how best to use, and not abuse, the services rendered by their general practitioners and doctors in domiciliary care and hospital services and hospital out-patient departments; to explain new treatments which arise from medical research; to teach the value of immunisation and what it does. I wonder how many people know of the recent breakthrough towards preventing thousands of children from becoming deaf as a result of the discovery of a vaccine which prevents German measles. For the female population, there is the question of fertility, contraception, pregnancy, labour and ante-natal exercises. All those things are of supreme importance to young mothers.
My proposed Bill seeks to ensure that programmes will be shown at appropriate times of the day and that a reasonable amount of time is given at periods when a large audience is probable. It is obviously no good showing films about dental hygiene and the care of teeth at midnight if the aim is to reach an audience of school children.
For the purpose of organising these programmes, the bill seeks to establish a joint committee of the B.B.C. the I.T.A., the Health Education Council and the Department of Health and Social Security. There would be a spin-off of great value to local health authorities and schools in providing teaching material for cassettes. In my view, cassettes will be the big thing in the mass media world in the next few years, and the Bill would enable the local health authorities, schools, colleges and medical schools to get in at the start of that revolution.
The Bill has the support of all parts of the House. I am sorry that the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications has not seen fit to come to the Chamber because obviously, if the Bill were passed, it would become part of his Department's responsibility. My sponsors are all doctors, with the exception of the hon. Member for Roxburgh,

Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel), because unfortunately the Liberal Party does not have a medically-qualified representative in the House.
The words "good health" will be on the lips of millions of people over the next five or six days. The Bill's purpose is to make that good health a reality.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Pavitt, Dr. Dickson Mabon, Dr. Miller, Mr. David Steel. Sir M. Stoddart-Scott, Dr. Stuttaford, Dr. Summerskill and Dr. Vaughan.

HEALTH EDUCATION (TELEVISION)

Bill to require television authorities to provide facilities for the purpose of transmitting programmes relating to health education, presented accordingly and read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday, 18th February, and to be printed. [Bill 60.]

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. John Stradling Thomas.]

MACHINE TOOL INDUSTRY

12.10 p.m.

Mr. Maurice Edelman: I am sorry to usher in the debates on the Christmas Adjournment with a subject as gloomy as the slump in the machine tool industry, but I do so because the matter is both grave and urgent.
It is grave and urgent not only because it affects large numbers of my own constituents who work in the most important machine tool factory in the whole of Europe but because, it affects the whole of our national engineering industry. It is grave and urgent because the machine tool industry as such is the lifeblood of industry. It is the heart and centre of the second industrial revolution, just as it was the pacemaker of the first Industrial Revolution, and so in raising this matter I am raising a subject not only of a constituency or of parochial interest but of national concern, and I hope that as a result of the debate the Minister will be able to give encouragement not only to


my own constituents but to all those others who are dependent upon or involved in industry throughout the country.
The symptoms of the grave depression from which the industry is suffering are clear. In the first instance, there has been a decline in the order book of the machine tool industry. It has fallen this year, compared with last year, by about 43 per cent. The figure is not final but it is something of that order. In addition to that, Alfred Herbert Ltd. has underlined the seriousness of the matter in its company report, which shows that last year it lost over £2 million and was able to pay only a token ½ per cent. dividend in order to maintain its trustee status. Even more serious than that is the fact that the continuing redundancies mean the progressive loss of skilled men. They mean that no new apprentices, who are, in turn, the lifeblood of industry, are being taken on. So it all adds up not only to a human tragedy but to a possible national industrial tragedy. Indeed, I would say to the Under-Secretary of State that what we are now seeing in this industry, certainly what we are now feeling, reflects very much the mood and atmosphere of last year when the misfortunes of Rolls-Royce and U.C.S. came to a head.
It is perfectly true that managements in this difficult situation are making desperate efforts to remedy the situation. Not only are they sending out their salesmen to try to obtain more orders, a proper and natural thing to do, but, in the interests of their shareholders, they are trying to rationalise and slim down their companies. Although in a sense this is a logical thing to do, I believe that in practice what may well serve the interests of the shareholders when a company goes in for the rationalisation of production and of the number of its superfluous employees may ultimately be contrary to the national interest—that a great industry like the machine tool industry should go in for methods of rationalisation and even of diversification which may affect not only the machine tool industry itself but the whole of our national industry. Indeed, what has happened with redundancies is very much like putting a man suffering from a wasting disease on a starvation diet. The result is likely to be death—at a time

when it is necessary to broaden the whole basis of the industry by enlarging the numbers of productive, technical workers.
What is happening is that productive and technical workers are being made redundant while managements, inevitably the last to go, are left in their place in an industry which is top heavy with managements and has not got the productive capacity to meet what might well be future opportunities if the industry were helped to recover.
I believe that in the machine tool industry, as in most other industries, the great need is for expansion, but what we have seen in the last 10 years has been the very reverse of expansion. In fact, in the last 10 years there has been a steady, progressive decline, in the number of machine tools in use. In 1961 there were 1·25 million machine tools in service. In 1971 there are only 1 million.
Worse than this shrinkage in the actual number of machine tools, which are means to improving technologies, is the fact that there has been a rising obsolescence, not to say obsoleteness, in the industry, which a few figures will illustrate. Today, four out of five British machine tools are over five years old. If we compare that with our keenest competitors, Germany and Japan, we see that in West Germany one in three machine tools are over five years old and in Japan only one out of two machine tools are over five years old. In other words, what we are now confronting is the fact that we have to face the challenges of the 21st century with designs, and sometimes actual tools, of the 19th century. Someone has rightly said that our machine tool industry is dying of old age, and unless there is some kind of refreshment, that, indeed, will be the case.
It might be argued that statistically that does not tell the whole of the story, so let us look at it from a different angle. If we look at the industry from the point of view of capacity we see that in the last five years the United Kingdom bought 200,000 machine tools. Germany bought over double that number. 480,000, and Japan nearly four times that number, 760,000. In other words, the net result which we have to face fairly and squarely, without sentimentality, is that our own


workers in the engineering industry generally and certainly in the machine tool industry are being increasingly underpowered, not only absolutely but certainly in relation to our competitors.
Just to illustrate that further—this will be the end of the major statistics which I want to offer to the Minister today, and I offer them because they are relevant and illustrative of the difficulties which the industry is facing—as long ago as 1967—unfortunately, these are the last figures available—it was established that Sweden invested approximately 1,500 dollars per man; the United States 1,250 dollars per man; France 1,000 dollars per man: West Germany 810 dollars per man; and ourselves only 560 dollars per man.
We have to consider that it is in this enfeebled and debilitated situation that we are going to face the prospect of entry into the Common Market, where already there are well-established competitors, well equipped, and renewing their industry, with whom we have to cope.
I agree that protectionism is not the answer, and I am not a protectionist. Protectionism merely leads to a stagnating industry, and that is as true of the machine tool industry as of anything else. The situation since 1962 has deteriorated in terms of investment. If we look at the outcome of that deterioration we have cause for alarm. Last year 15 per cent. of our expenditure of £200 million on machine tools went on European Economic Community production, whereas we supplied only 4 per cent. of the E.E.C. total consumption of £500 million worth of machine tools. There can be only one conclusion from these figures, and it is that unless we modernise and re-equip our industry we shall face the gravest and direst consequences.
What is needed now—I urged this on the Minister yesterday when he received a deputation of trade unionists, members of all the unions concerned in the machine tool industry in Coventry, reinforced by the national organiser of the Amalgamated Engineering Union—is that the Government must give some kind of shot in the arm to the industry if it is to survive. I do not believe that I am overstating the case.
At present there is a turning away, even inside the industry, from forms of investment which it has believed might not bring the results which could be achieved with diversification. Thus we have the picture of a great machine tool firm turning from machine tools to chemicals, and other firms which, instead of using their resources for production, are acting as factors and agents for foreign machine tool producers because they are able to make as much, if not more, profit in that way rather than concentrating on actual production. Those are the soft options in which many firms are engaged understandably in the interests of their shareholders but wrongly in the interests of the country and their workers, to whom they are responsible.
I hope the Government will agree to set up an ad hoc working party of trade unionists, employers and Government to look into the structure of the industry and see what can be done in the longer term, taking into account the ambiguous activities of such firms as I have mentioned, acting as agents on the one hand and producers on the other, and to inquire into whether that is the proper way of revitalising the industry.
In raising the major point in my speech I turn to a matter on which all those concerned in the machine tool industry are in agreement—Members of Parliament, managements, trade unions and their members. Everyone believes that the time has come for the Government to give some stimulus to existing machine tool firms. They need this first-aid treatment now. What I have proposed has been widely welcomed, namely, the idea that the Government should encourage the nationalised industries—and I use the word "encourage" because I know that constitutionally the Minister does not have direct responsibility for the commercial policies of such industries—to re-equip and modernise their machine tools. This is a practical thing which can be done. For the cost of two Concordes it would be possible for the Government dramatically to change the picture in the industry, to stimulate it so that the new tools are there to meet any upturn in trade. The Minister will no doubt say that in six months' or a years' time industry will be put into first gear and if we make this move now


the machine tool industry will be able to meet that challenge.
I was disappointed with a reply I received from the Minister for Industry on 20th December. I had asked him what percentage approximately of machine tools operated by nationalised industries were over 10 years old. He replied:
The information is not available.
That seems to be a very grave dereliction on the part of either the nationalised industries or the Minister if such important information about the condition of the tools employed by the industries is not available. He went on to say, when asked about the replacement of such tools:
decisions on the replacement of equipment are a matter for the commercial judgment of the industries".
I do not believe that the matter can be left there. There is total unanimity in the industry such as I have never observed with any industry with which I have been concerned as a Member. This is specific action which the Government can take without any cost to themselves. It would result in a stimulation of industry, bringing new hope to those working in it.
I do not say that the transformation would take place overnight but if we look ahead six months I would hope that something could be done about this. I know that the Minister is a Latin scholar, and I would say to him quis cito dot, bis dat. Help given now is help which will not decline in value as the years go on. There are other means of helping, such as the restoration of investment grants, more regional help, and tax reserve certificates on the Swedish model for machine tool investment. Those are matter for dispute and discussion.

Mr. Robert Redmond: One of the things that worry me about the machine tool industry is that British industry seems to buy so many of its machines from abroad. I have never seen a British-made centrifuge or compacting machine in any of the factories I have visited. Will the hon. Gentleman take this up with the industry in his constituency?

Mr. Edelman: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. One of the most depressing

things is to go around some Coventry factories and see machine tools from Cincinatti, Zurich and East Germany. I am sure that had there been the design drive inside the industry such machines would not be there.
In addition to this, there are some firms acting as agents for continental firms. I urge the Minister to undertake that he will consult his right hon. Friend and other members of the Government so that immediate action can be taken. While the doctors are arguing, the patient is bleeding to death. I say that advisedly, not merely as an extravagant comparison. There is something very grave happening to the machine tool industry, and I urge the Minister most strongly not to leave it too late. There are times when, even if he cannot give a promise, a word of hope can effect a magical transformation. Such a time is now, and I ask the Minister to give us that word today.

12.29 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) for giving the House this opportunity to discuss, albeit briefly, this important industry. I share in the concern which he expressed, for the industry has grave problems at this time. The hon. Gentleman expressed himself in moderate and accurate terms and described a situation which has been causing the Government concern and worry for some time.
I was pleased to receive a delegation yesterday from the Coventry machine tool factories—a delegation of shop stewards and trade unionists led by the hon. Gentleman. I hope that our exchange of views was helpful and that it will lead to further discussions, which I would personally welcome. The problems of the industry cannot be solved by any single action or stroke of the pen. There is a great deal to be done in many ways as the hon. Gentleman suggested, to pull the industry out of the doldrums.
I share the hon. Gentleman's concern about those in the industry who have been made redundant. It is tragic that skilled men with years of experience should find themselves without a job—in my opinion temporarily, because I believe


that matters will improve and that business will pick up; but even a temporary redundancy is not without pain, grief and hardship for those concerned.
The hon. Gentleman suggested that management was top heavy. I draw his attention to the announcement that one of the big machine tool companies, Elliott, has agreed to cut board salaries by 10 per cent. That rather belies what he says, and shows that management is acutely aware of the need to economise during the difficult period which the industry is going through.
I will make a few general points before coming to the specific points raised by the hon. Gentleman. First, this is a cyclical industry and always has been. It is usually one of the last industries to be hit in a recession. As the shortage of business works through the consumer industries and engineering, it is finally the machine tool orders which fall. The industry, therefore, is one the last to recover from a recession. It is also often one of the worst hit industries in a recession because the depth of the recession is multiplied in the capital goods end of industry by a factor which makes it all the worse. The industry has certainly had a rough time.
Secondly, it is a completely international industry. I was interested in the exchange between the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Redmond). Inevitably there will always be large imports, and the only answer is for us always to have large exports. There is a great degree of specialisation. There has to be and, as the years go by, there will be, more and more specialisation in particular types of machines. No country can dominate in the production of all the different types of machine tools that are marketed. There will have to be companies which are dominant in one field and which sell worldwide. This means that we need not only high engineering skill and good design but also tremendously effective market research and sales effort, apart from efficiency of production, at home. These lessons have already been learnt by the industry.
The United Kingdom trade balance in machine tools has improved startlingly over the last few years. In 1967 we had

a balance of payments loss of trade in machine tools of £9 million, since when a surplus has been achieved of £12 million in 1968, £27 million in 1969, £39 million in 1970, and in the first nine months of this year £32 million. This is no mean feat in a world recession in machine tools, and I pay tribute to the industry for this achievement.
The hon. Gentleman felt that there was something to fear, because of the present condition of the industry, in our accession to the European Economic Community. Here the figures are even more dramatic. In 1967 we had a balance of payments deficit of £18 million with the countries of the Common Market, whereas in the first 10 months of this year we had a balance of payments surplus of £1·2 million. That is a remarkable turn-round, and it shows that we are competitive with Europe, although we are selling over a tariff varying between 3 per cent. and 11 per cent. and we are at home protected by a 9 per cent. tariff against Common Market machine tools. Despite these tariffs, which will of course drop by stages as the transitional period goes by, we have at present a positive balance of trade with Europe. We are, therefore, highly competitive and we have five years in which to become more competitive. I should have thought that the industry would regard this as an opportunity and not something to fear. The fact that we have spare capacity is a positive factor which will enable the industry to undertake the orders it receives in due course from our European partners.

Mr. Antony Buck: Is my hon. Friend aware that the view he has just expressed is shared by the management of the Colchester Lathe Company, which has one of the most outstanding records? The view is taken that when the 7 per cent. tariff differential against which the company is operating in Europe is removed there will be further expansion, and that confidence will be assisted, as it has been in the machine tool industry in my constituency by what has been agreed in Washington.

Mr. Ridley: I am sure my hon. Friend is right. I have personally visited three machine tool fairs in Europe, one on the Western side of the Iron Curtain and two on the Eastern side. I was extremely impressed by the quality of the machine tools on display there, as I believe were


the customers. We have nothing about which to be ashamed or frightened in our product, but it will require sustained effort on market research and marketing to translate this into orders for the home industry.
British industry has been expanding in production and not, as the hon. Gentleman said, the reverse of expanding. But he is right that the major producers of the world have been expanding much faster than we have. I am certain that there is an expanding market for the industry if only we can take hold of it.
At home there has been this large and deep cyclical down-turn. In the first half of 1970 the average orders for the British machine tool industry were worth about £11 million per month. In the first nine months of 1971 this had fallen by half to £5½ million per month. There has been a steep dip in orders. Worse, there are so far few signs of an improvement in orders. It is possible to say that we have reached the bottom of the trough, but I do not think it is possible to say vet that we have started to climb out of it. This has reflected itself in redundancy. A year ago, in August, 1970, 8,807 men were employed in the industry in Coventry; now there are only 7,109. This is the measure of the way the recession has hit the hon. Gentleman's constituency.
The industry will be the last to benefit from the gathering reflation which is taking place, but it is worth listing some of the things which the Government have done to stimulate industrial investment as opposed to general reflation. There is now 2 per cent. off Bank Rate, which stands at 5 per cent.; 5 per cent. off corporation tax; free depreciation in the regions and generous tax allowances elsewhere; and S.E.T. has been halved. In addition, there is the accelerated payment of investment grants, which will cost £25 million. The total of tax reliefs, including personal tax relief, is about £1,100 million this year and will be £1,400 million in a full year.
These measures must have a stimulating effect on machine tool orders once they work through to that industry. I do not believe that any more could be done at present for a general stimulation of engineering as a whole and investment in particular.
I take the hon. Gentleman's point that the average age of British machine tools

is too high and I would like to see it being reduced by copious ordering. But I do not think the Government can be accused of not having made available incentives, inducements and the green light generally to industry to make those investments. Therefore, I hope the industry will begin to make them now that they see the opportunity of Europe opening before them.
The hon. Gentleman's main suggestion was that we should bring forward replacement of machine tool plant in the nationalised industries and he complained about the lack of information given to him in an answer by my hon. Friend. If I now give him a considerable amount of information on this subject, he will see what scope there is in the policy he has advocated, and I fear he will realise that there is very little scope indeed.
The electricity and gas industries have practically no machine tools at all and have no requirement for them. The National Coal Board has a small use for machine tools, and its replacement orders are about £50,000 a year, which is such a small amount that it would not be significant against the size of the problem. The air corporations both have small maintenance workshops, but nearly all the machines there are under 10 years old, since they are tailored to the particular aircraft in service and such aircraft are rarely, if ever, 10 years old. So far there would appear to be no scope at all for replacing machine tools in the possession of nationalised industries.
British Railways have their own workshops, as the hon. Gentleman knows. My right hon. Friend, the Minister for Transport Industries is discussing with the railways means of bringing forward investment in those industries, and the hon. Gentleman might like to question my right hon. Friend on the situation in the railway workshops since he will appreciate that that is not the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
The requirement in British road transport for machine tools is virtually nil. The situation in the British Steel Corporation is that it has £15 million worth of machine tools, but most of the machines are under 10 years old and there is very little scope indeed for bringing forward investment there.

Mr. Edelman: I am obliged for this information, but in advancing the idea of replacement of machinery over 10 years old I am not putting forward the figure of ten years as a magic figure. It has been suggested that machine tools over five years old should be replaced. Since the hon. Gentleman mentioned the British Railways workshops and also the relatively substantial amount of machine tools which are owned by the British Steel Corporation, will he endeavour to give a global figure of the machine tools over five years old which might be replaced?

Mr. Ridley: I believe that if I were to give that figure—and I do not have that information—the hon. Gentleman would then ask me to give the figure for machine tools over 2½ years old. I believe that what I have said demonstrates that, even if everything the hon. Gentleman asks were done, the scope would be very small for improving the machine tool industry. I should like to persuade the hon. Gentleman that it is far better to operate by bringing forward major capital projects in nationalised industries which, in turn, then call for orders from the engineering industry and machine tool industry to complete the cycle.
I shall list for the hon. Gentleman some of the things which have been brought forward by the nationalised industries, the impact of which on the machine tool industry will be far greater than the replacement of machine tools in the possession of the nationalised industries themselves. The naval shipbuilding programme will have capital works amounting to £70 million, which will have a stimulating effect on the engineering sector as a whole since much of that work will go out from the yards to other engineering works. Then there is the bringing forward of the Ince Power Station in Cheshire, which will have a large effect. Then there are some other small items amounting to £100 million extra capital expenditure. There will be expenditure on distribution and transmission networks by the gas and electricity boards; capital works expenditure by the National Coal Board; replacement of rolling stock for use on Southern and Eastern Region commuter lines by British Rail. Furthermore, British Rail is to build two new ferries to replace existing ships on the Sealink services to the Isle of Wight; Scottish transport

Group is considering the possibility of advancing a new ferry for use on the Clyde; and London Transport Executive will bring forward orders for new trains on the Northern Line.
In addition, there will be some £4½ million of additional defence expenditure, which would include 100 Bulldog light aircraft for the R.A.F. There is also to be a Scottish fisheries protection vessel. All those projects, either directly or indirectly, will create a far greater stimulus for demand in the machine tool industry than anything which may be done within the nationalised industries themselves.
I should like to end on a brighter note because, although the situation is serious, a new confidence is beginning to run through industry. I should like to point to several other factors which should bring more orders to the machine tool industry. Only yesterday we saw a further improvement in confidence expressed by the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, and we have also seen a recent upturn in engineering orders generally. The degree of industrial de-stocking is quite startling; there has been a great increase in car registrations and production. All this will mean more work for engineering. I would also mention the increase in the demand for consumer durables, which, again, tends to give more work to engineering which, in turn, will need to order new machine tools. The decision to go ahead with Concorde may also call for a considerable increase in the number of numerically controlled machine tools that will be needed.
There is one piece of good news I can give to the hon. Gentleman, which is that the acceleration of the retraining programme and the decision to build extra Government training centres will provide an extra 3,000 training places. It is expected that this will result in orders for 500 new machine tools worth around £500,000. This will shortly be processed.
Finally, the lifting of the United States surcharge and the realignment of parities gives us a great advantage in the United States, as opposed to the situation which prevailed immediately hitherto, and also in Germany and Japan. Therefore, the opportunities for industry in that respect are very great. Then we have opening up before us the Common Market. The opportunities could not be greater. There


are no restrictions or hindrances in the way of this industry. Therefore, I hope that the industry will take these opportunities, that it will develop, expand and improve marketing research and marketing design and that productivity will flourish.
The hon. Gentleman suggested an ad hoc working party to discuss this matter. I never believe that it is worth asking about the fora in which we discuss matters since we are always happy to discuss these things and to help in any way we can. I would remind the hon. Gentleman that there is a Little Neddy which deals with the machine tool industry which is an ideal forum where trades unions, employers and Government assemble to discuss these matters. As I said to the hon. Gentleman and to the delegation which met me yesterday, my Department will be only too happy to consider any other suggestions the hon. Gentleman would like to make so that we may discuss them with the various parties. I do not think that anything should stand in the way of greater communication between all the parties concerned.
I conclude by hoping that the machine tool industry will have a happier year than it has had in 1971. I wish all success to those who have the great responsibility of bringing about recovery and expansion in the industry.

HOME OWNERSHIP

12.50 p.m.

Mr. Martin McLaren: From machine tools, we pass to discuss the progress of home ownership. I hope that the House will feel that this is a suitable subject for the day of the Christmas Adjournment. Today we go home. At this time of the year, we think of those who are homeless or inadequately housed and of others who hope to own their homes whom we should like to help.
In my election address, I said:
We will help more people to own their own homes. Young couples should be able to get mortgages on reasonable terms.
It is partly in fulfilment of that pledge that I raise this subject today. I shall do so only briefly as I think that there

are other hon. Members who wish to take part in the debate.
The Ministerial responsibility here lies in the Department of the Environment, which supervises the work of housing authorities and has an influence over building societies which are easily the largest source of house purchase finance. Naturally, in an Adjournment debate, I can discuss only matters of administration. If I refer incidentally to matters requiring legislation, I hope that that will be permitted under the Standing Order.
I recognise that home ownership is going well. I want it to go still better. A rough measure of the progress that we have achieved is that in the year 1914, when the First World War broke out, only 10 per cent. of the houses in the country were owner-occupied. After the Second World War, the figure had gone up to about 25 per cent. Today, the figure stands at about 50 per cent., or half. There are 9 million houses owner-ocupied. However, this percentage of 50 has been easily exceeded in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States of America, and I should like to see us getting up to anything between 60 and 70 per cent. One point not to be neglected is that home ownership assists mobility of labour, as it is very difficult for tenants to move and find other tenancies in new areas where they want to work.
I come now to ways in which the Government might give further help. They have done much already, and I congratulate them. It is not necessary to repeat the various steps already taken, but I should like to explore further avenues of progress. It always comes down to the fact that houses must be available for sale, and mortgage finance must be available on terms which borrowers can meet. We are mainly concerned with the less well-off borrowers, since the better-off have bought their homes already if they have wanted to. It is pleasing to see that no fewer than 90,000 advances have already been made to people with incomes of less than £1,400 a year, and the recent reduction in mortgage interest rates naturally has helped.
I come, then, to some suggestions. First, I hope that the Department will continue to encourage local authorities to sell council houses to sitting tenants at generous discounts. I know that it


has issued a general consent to sell at a discount of 20 per cent. off the market value. My own local authority proposes a discount of 30 per cent. That is a good offer which I hope will be sanctioned and widely taken up. It is disappointing that a number of councils now controlled by Labour—and there are some controlled by Conservatives—have abandoned schemes for selling, and I hope that they will be persuaded to change their minds. Most people will agree that it is desirable that council tenants should be given the opportunity to buy their homes if they wish. I think that we can expect that the introduction of fair rents will encourage more to do so.
Second, local authorities should be persuaded to release more land for housing development, and some houses should be reserved to enable lower income groups to become home owners.
Third, I make honourable mention o^ the scheme sponsored recently by the Alliance Building Society, by which there are low initial payments during the first five years of a mortgage covering only interest on the amount borrowed and with no element of repayment. That caters very well for the younger man who has prospects of promotion in his work and of a higher income as the years go by.

Mr. Ernest G. Perry: The hon. Gentleman has just made a very interesting point about the scheme introduced by the Alliance Building Society. However, I do not think that he pointed out that the scheme operates at a reduced rate of interest as well, which is probably the most important feature of it.

Mr. McLaren: As I understand it, during the first years one pays a reduced rate of interest because there is no element of repayment of the capital sum. One is paying interest only on the sum borrowed.
Fourth, it would help matters if banks could be encouraged to lend money for the purchase of furniture and fittings with which to equip a house. The owner has to think not only of the cost of his house but of what should go inside it.
Fifth, I should like to see older borrowers given more latitude and en-

couragement, especially if there is some younger member of the family such as a grown-up son or daughter who may be willing to join in the mortgage. It is sad to hear people say that they ought to have bought their homes before but that they have left it too late.
Sixth, mortgages should be spread over longer periods.
Seventh, conveyancing charges should be reduced, bearing in mind that a lot of the work of conveyancing is of a repetitive and routine nature. Not long ago. I was concerned in buying a house. I am a member of the Bar, but I have never done any serious conveyancing. I thought that I would like to avoid solicitors' charges, so I did it on a "do-it-yourself" basis. I knew nothing about it, but I found it child's play. There was nothing to it. I understand that my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor is taking action in this direction.
Eighth, I should like to see the threshold of stamp duty on house purchase further raised in these days of increasing house prices.
Ninth, we might think about the system prevailing in Australia by which the savings of a house purchaser are matched by a grant of Government money to enable the deposit to be found.
Tenth, we should continue to give encouragement to local authorities to pay tenants' legal and removal expenses on moving out of a council house to become owner-occupiers, so liberating a council house for someone else who needs one.
All these are different ways in which the Government can encourage and assist. I know that today the cost of land is a problem and a hurdle. In itself, it is a symptom of the good demand for house purchase.
I end with this thought. The House has in its history often been concerned with noble moral causes, such as the abolition of the slave trade or the restriction on hours of work of women and children in mines and factories. In our day, I can think of no better or more rewarding cause than that we in Parliament and others who are members of local authorities should give our help to the many people who have the ambition and the dream that they may one day live in a house of their own.

1.2 p.m.

Mr. Ernest G. Perry: I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) on selecting this subject for discussion. In all his statements he tried to be non-controversial. Even when he mentioned council tenants purchasing their own houses, he went on to say that many Tory and Labour councils have withdrawn the offer of the sale of council houses to tenants. There may be a reason for that. It may be because houses are in short supply in these areas. Some Tory and Labour councils may have had to say that they cannot sell their houses because they have housing problems. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on selecting and discussing this subject in such a helpful way.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned 10 different points which we might consider to try to help people to purchase their own houses. Each point should be looked at carefully by the Government, or any future Government, in considering how to help people to purchase their own homes.
When I was in the insurance business I tried to sell house-purchase policies. This is a most welcome way to enable people to obtain the finance to buy their own houses. I was pleased to read that now over 53 per cent. of people in this country own their own homes. This is something to be valued, to be treasured and to be increased. Owning one's home provides a continuing asset as well as providing a place in which to live. This is important for ordinary people.
It is the middle and lower income groups who we want to see safely assured of a place of their own. The Labour Government tried to help people to purchase their own homes through the option mortgage scheme. It is strange that, to some extent, that idea has been adopted by the Alliance Building Society, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, and at a reduced rate of interest. There is plenty of scope along these lines to encourage the middle and lower income groups to purchase their own homes.
I particularly wish to deal with London, because I know that the Minister is concerned about the situation in London. We should realise that the growth of home ownership in London has spread over the last century from

the old housing associations like Peabody and the Guinness Trust. They led the way for local authorities to try to develop council estates in the early part of the 20th century.
We are seeing the growth of home ownership in London. The trouble in Inner London is that there are so many old properties, ordinary terraced houses, for which the prices being asked today are, to some extent, beyond the financial resources of the people living in them. It is common for a house bought in Inner London four years ago for £6,000 to have an asking price now of £13,000. One of my constituents paid £6,000 for a house only four years ago. She has just sold it for £13,000 to some invaders from Chelsea. It is impossible for the ordinary middle-of-the-road person to purchase a house at such a price. We must look at ways by which we can help people in the middle and low income groups to buy their own houses.
In London there are many property sharks. Companies are being formed because property in London is at a premium. These people are coming in and, in some cases, forcing up the price of property in London so that ordinary people cannot afford to buy places of their own. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is the lower income group which needs the most help.
One of my constituents, not the proverbial widow but a spinster lady of nearly 80 years of age, owned six terraced houses in an adjoining constituency. She expressed a desire to the people who were to sell those houses for her that she wanted the sitting tenants to be given an opportunity to buy them. I have been in touch with the six tenants. They were unable to buy those properties. Those six terraced houses were bought by a property company for £4,800, and they are now being offered to the tenants for £3,800 each. This is the kind of thing which is going on in London. Therefore, people in London are being penalised regarding home ownership.
It is all right in the provinces where there is plenty of land, but no land is available in London. I am sure that the Minister has this point at the top of his list of priorities for housing in London. Some people may regard what I have just said as good business. It may be good business for some, but


it is depriving people in London of the opportunity of owning their own houses.
The building societies are overloaded with money. They have so much money that they are seeking different ways of lending it for house purchase. I advise anyone contemplating buying a house or investing in house purchase to put his money in a building society. People should be very careful of the deferred house purchase scheme, because they may be caught. Some of the smaller insurance companies, some of the sharks selling deferred house purchase, when people make application for an advance after two or three years in the deferred house purchase scheme, tell them: "We are sorry, but we have stopped that scheme now", or, "The house does not come up to the valuation." People must be warned against the deferred house purchase scheme. If people have money to invest, I advise them to put it in a bank, or preferably a building society, so that they can draw it out when they want it. When I was in insurance I came across many people who had been caught because, having entered into a deferred house purchase scheme, when they wanted the money to buy a house they were told: "We are sorry, but we have now dropped that scheme." It is important that this point should be pressed home to people.
I was interested in what the hon. Gentleman said about a tax concession for lower-paid workers. We discussed some time ago a kind of negative income tax. There is no reason why people on low earnings who want to buy a house should not be helped along these lines. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about that. Many people in casual employment, such as building trade workers and those employed in hotels, want to own their own houses. They are not salaried, they are not members of the regular staff, and they do not belong to any pension scheme. They ought to be able to buy their own houses.
I am glad to have the opportunity of giving a little advice to people who are contemplating buying a house. My advice is that if they want to become a house owner later, and in order to do so they want to save some money now, they should put their money into a building society, and not go in for

deferred house purchase through a small insurance company.

1.10 p.m.

Mr. Norman Tebbit: I, too, am glad to be able to take part in this debate. I was surprised that it started a little earlier than we had expected, particularly as the Member's car park is so full. I take it that that is because of a desire to do some Christmas shopping, rather than a desire to increase home ownership.
We often take the case for home ownership as read, but it is worth restating. The owner-occupier looks after his property better than does the tenant. I do not blame him for that, and I do not blame the tenant, either. The owner-occupier tends to improve his home and to add to its value because he knows that he will get the value back. The tenant is not in that position.
The owner-occupier is more likely to move away from the high-cost commuter areas when he retires, which, again, the tenant, and particularly the public authority tenant—and, after all, there are not too many private tenants about these days—does not. That movement by the owner-occupier is helpful in keeping down the cost of property in high-pressure areas.
By arranging his mortgage to end at about the time he retires, the owner-occupier ensures that his outgoings are reduced at the same time as his income is reduced. That kind of arrangement eases the problem of the man retired on a fixed income. The owner-occupier normally covers his mortgage by insurance—most certainly he should do so—and in that way he protects his family in the event of his untimely death.
In the present situation of a shortage of rented accommodation there is a lack of mobility on the part of tenants. They find it difficult to move to get a job somewhere else. The home owner is not so immobile. Certainly there is no reason technically why the tenant should not be mobile, but for the public authority tenant there is just not the machinery by which, even when houses are availble, it is easy for him to move from one list to another.
The home owner has the sheer satisfaction of being beholden to no landlord, and he has pride in the possession of his


home which is undoubtedly increasing in value. If it is such a good bet, why is it that only 53 per cent. of the households are in private occupation? The greatest bar to increasing home ownership is undoubtedly the price of land. I must emphasise that to my hon. Friend. We can be sure that, one way or another, by 1980 about three million to four million—or perhaps more, we hope—more units of accommodation, as we tend to call them, will have been built. In some way the land will have been made available for them.
If each of those sites is gouged out of reluctant authorities, one by one, the price will be very high. Speculators who can get hold of a bit of land will sit on it, knowing that the following year the price will go up by a handsome margin. At auction after auction district valuers will look at the price of land with horror, knowing that they have to pay the market value for land, and accordingly they will jack up their sights. The public tenant will be worse off as well.
If, on the other hand, the Minister, at some time, says that he is determined that the land for that number of houses will be made available—and made available on a continuing basis—and he pledges himself to that, it will be a deflating experience for the land speculator and for the price of land. One way or another that land will be made available. If it is done willingly, the price will be much lower than if it is done reluctantly.
I follow the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) about mortgages for older borrowers. I believe that with a little more encouragement the building societies would be willing to move in that direction.
As my hon. Friend said, the cost of conveyancing is still much too high. It seems absurd that if I sell my house tomorrow, having bought it only a year ago, and almost nothing having changed, all the solemn paraphernalia would be gone through and at the end of the day, in many cases, the protection which the would-be purchaser gained would not be worth much against a solicitor who carefully inquired whether a motorway was going through the property, but had no means and no obligation to listen to the local gossip, which would have told him

that the motorway would run not very far away from the property. It seems absurd that these costs go on, and on, and on.
I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to give me some encouragement about the sale of new town houses which are now being held back to some extent, not by a lack of willingness on the part of new town authorities, certainly not by a lack of willingness on the part of would-be purchasers, or even a lack of funds, but by a considerable hold up at the. Land Registry which is unable to deal with the huge tide of work that has devolved upon it.
I know that my hon. Friend will not be able to promise that V.A.T. will in no way impinge upon housing, but I hope he will be able to assure me that the Secretary of State for the Environment will be in there in the Cabinet biting and kicking at the Chancellor of the Exchequer if there is any suggestion whatsoever that V.A.T. will affect the price of a house.
Perhaps the Department of the Environment might consider sponsoring, through some agency or another—I am sure that there are enough agencies through which it could do this—competitive prizes for young architects and young developers who bring forward designs for houses particularly suited for purchase by the younger and less affluent would-be purchaser.
One hears talk of the extendable house—the house, initially of low cost and relatively restricted accommodation, which is designed to be increased in size as the young couple bring up a family, without their having to move and to go through all the paraphernalia and costs again. That is a possibility for initiative by the Department.
When the last Conservative Government left office, they left a situation in which the average industrial wage earner's wage was sufficient to purchase on mortgage the average new house then being built. I make no party point. With the passage of years that situation no longer prevails, and I should like my hon. Friend to say that it is one of the Government's ambitions to see that before the next General Election we have made substantial progress towards restoring that situation because, unless we do, all


our talk about extending home ownership beyond the 53 per cent. mark and into the lower income groups will be as dust in our mouths.

1.20 p.m.

Mr. George Cunningham: I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) on raising this subject and to continue the relatively non-partisan nature of the discussion. Sometimes, when the House is fuller, we fling across the Chamber charges about tax relief for those who borrow money in order to buy a house. It may be worth while, in the very quiet mood of the House this morning, to see whether it is possible, in a non-partisan way, to extend the area of agreement between the two sides.
I start from the view that it is desirable that as many people as possible should own their own homes. I know very few of my constituents who are ideologically opposed to doing so and thousands who are determined to do so if they can only lay their hands on enough money.
The Government have said that they wish to make it easier for people to own homes, and in some small respects they have taken measures to achieve that end. But if they are serious about this they need to look more carefully at tax relief for the house borrower. At the moment, the tax relief provided is in direct proportion to income. Therefore, without wanting to use the word "subsidy", to which I know many people object—I do regard it as a subsidy, but let us call it "assistance"—I must point out that this assistance is greater the better off the recipient, the greater the value of the house he owns and the more he borrows.
Someone who can afford to buy a £20,000 or £30,000 house in my constituency, in Islington, does not need tax relief, to allow him to buy a house. He would buy a house anyway, whether he got tax relief or not. The effect of withdrawing that tax relief—a course which I am not suggesting—would be to dampen down the inflation in house prices which has occurred over the years.
In a situation in which there are not enough houses to go round, the effect of repaying in the form of tax relief

some of the cost of buying a house is simply to allow a person to pay more gross than he could otherwise afford. It does not allow him to get a bigger house, if one takes all buyers together, because, the market being very restricted, the effect is only to raise the general prices of houses.

Mr. Tebitt: The hon. Gentleman will, of course, want to emphasis, I am sure, that this situation applies not just to mortgage interest tax relief but also to the tax relief that a rich man gets for his wife and children, as opposed to what the poorer man gets. It is inherent in any form of tax relief that the man who pays the most tax gains the most benefit. I see no moral reason why the man who pays surtax should get a bigger tax reduction than I do for having another child, but this is how it is in all forms of tax relief.

Mr. Cunningham: With respect to the hon. Member, it is not. There would be a perfectly simple method, which may be open to objections by many people, of counteracting that. That would be to make tax reliefs reductions in tax payable instead of reductions in income taxable. I do not want to go into that revolutionary line of thought today, but that would be a way of achieving it. It was to achieve something like that that the option mortgage scheme was introduced, to give the same standard of subsidy to the relatively poor man as to the relatively rich man.
The rich man will buy his house anyway. There is no need to induce him to buy by means of tax relief. The people whom one wants to induce to buy are those on the edge who are thinking about it and who think it is too costly or genuinely find it too costly. Is there some means of making it cheaper for these people? Now there is. I believe that in the end we shall go over to a system in which there is no tax relief for borrowing for house purchase or improvement and that the option mortgage scheme will be extended to everyone, so that everyone, whatever his income, will get the same amount of tax relief when he borrows money—the subsidy which at the moment is 2½. per cent. on the interest that he pays.
The advantage of this system would be that it was infinitely flexible. If interest


rates fell considerably, it would be possible to reduce the margin of interest subsidy provided. If interest rates boomed up again, then the margin could be increased. It would be a flexible arrangement without the disadvantage of the present system of not taking away money from those who do not need to have it forgone and giving it on an equal basis to all.
One of the difficulties about this is that the housing people do not know about the tax situation and the tax people say, "That is to do with housing, and we are not looking into it very much." A point which is not often made in the House is that as a tax device this is most unusual, apart from the change introduced in 1969, in that it has no upper limit. It is treated not as an allowance, although we commonly regard it as an allowance, but as an outgoing, and as such it has no upper limit.
But, even if one treats it as an outgoing, there is one category of outgoing already in our tax system which does have an upper limit, and that is contributions to private pension schemes under the 1956 Finance Act, as amended this year. There is an upper limit of 15 per cent. of income there.
It is high time that the Government taxation and housing Departments together looked at these aspects in order to increase the temptation to buy of those who are on the margin of being able to afford it or not.

1.27 p.m.

Mr. Idris Owen: As there seems to be a unanimity of opinion on both sides today, I would attempt only to add some emphasis to the excellent speeches already made. I am in complete agreement with every speaker. All our problems in housing—exploitation of the customer and the tenant, for instance—stem from shortage. Every Minister and Government must decide how quickly we can overcome the shortage factor.
There is no doubt that someone who purchases a house for the first time suffers more than anyone else. Young couples who, for the first time in their lives, are determined to embark on home ownership, have nothing to sell and can only buy. It is very difficult today for anyone with an income below £1,750 to acquire a new house, and he is con

demned to buy a pre-war secondhand house—

Mr. George Cunningham: If he is lucky.

Mr. Owen: Indeed, if he is lucky.
When the Housing Finance Bill reaches the Statute Book and more council tenants are obliged to pay higher rents—what will then be known as fair rents—many husbands and wives will be asking, "Shall we leave this house for someone less well off and buy a new house?" I expect that this will happen and that the figure of 53 per cent. home ownership will rise.
But if they do that, what choice will they have? Will they leave a new, well-built, well-designed council house, less than five years old, for a house of inferior standards which was built before the war, and for an outlay equal to the rent which they are paying? This is a great discouragement, and I am sure that if the Minister thinks about these points he will come to the conclusion that many council house tenants in 1973 will be wanting to buy their own homes. In other words, he will have created a situation in which they will have some consumer choice.
The inflationary trends are apparent to all and we cannot stand idly by and allow these people to be exploited. Make no mistake, they are being exploited. Ostensibly we have a free market in home ownership with free market forces coming to play, but the shortage has been created by the shortage of land, and this is at the root of all the trouble.
When a farmer can acquire land for agricultural purposes on the fringe of a stress area for £200 an acre and then rejoice at being able to sell it for £20,000 an acre as a result of obtaining planning consent—he may get more: I am being modest and I am associating my remarks not with London and the Greater London area but with the provinces because these high prices have reached the provinces—inflation in house prices is bound to result.
I assure the House that these figures are modest, particularly in the Manchester conurbation and especially on the south side of the area. If a farmer who has paid £200 an acre is able, through a land agent, to acquire planning consent and get £20,000 without any


trouble, this is bound to be a prominent factor in house prices. We cannot stand by and allow this situation to develop.
The Government are not without some blame. Because of the £19,800 profit per acre made in such a deal, the Government, through the Exchequer and tax system, get a handsome piece of the action. They may feel disposed, having done so well, to put some of it back. In other words, the Government are collecting revenue as a result of the high price of land. I therefore invite them to consider putting at least some of it back from where it came, for they are, in effect, taking this money from young couples who want to buy their own homes.
The inflationary spiral is easy to see. The farmer sells the land at a large profit. The builder builds on it and sells at a profit. As Lloyd George used to say, it is the consumer who always pays. It is, of course, the consumer who pays the tax on the capital gain, and this is not a socially attractive proposition.
There is much room for thought in this matter. I urge the Government to make an inquiry into the cost of houses and the factors that have made it possible for a house in the Manchester area that was costing £3,750 in 1969 now to cost between £5,250 and £5,500. I know the major reason that would come out of such an inquiry. Whatever hon. Gentlemen opposite may say, I assure the House from personal experience that there is a desperate shortage of skilled craftsmen in the construction industry. There is room for a crash programme of training to enable those unfortunate unskilled construction workers who are unemployed to be trained in the new skills that are in short supply.
It has been suggested that if a lot of land were released on to the market house prices would come down. I agree. On the other hand, if a lot of labour were released on to the building market the price of labour would come down because, although construction industry workers are quite well represented by their trade unions, those unions have been able to negotiate terms applying to less than 50 per cent. of the total wage bill of the industry. It is not uncommon

for building craftsmen, because of this shortage and the lack of apprentices, to take home between £45 and £60 for their services.

Mr. Tebbit: Has my hon. Friend's attention been drawn to the case of a local authority in the South-East which recently said that although it wished to build more public authority houses and had made plans to do so, it was unable to employ sufficient skilled building workers to do the work?

Mr. Owen: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, which underlines the situation.
We can afford to be completely honest in discussing this subject rather than being only political, partly because of the Yuletide spirit which permeates the Chamber and partly because there is not the same degree of dissent as when our debates are better attended. I hope, therefore, that hon. Gentlemen opposite will accept from me, as one who has spent a lifetime in this industry, that young couples desiring to buy their own homes for the first time are being exploited in circumstances which appear to be beyond the control of all socially-minded people.
Building workers are among the highest paid people in this country today. This situation prevails because there is a far greater demand load on their services than there are men capable of carrying out the work. It is the old story that when there is a shortage, one must pay more for the item in short supply, and that is happening in this case. If we could have produced an adequate labour force with an adequate supply of land, the price of building would have come down dramatically.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see the 53 per cent. home ownership figure lifted to 80 per cent., for that would place less strain socially on the Exchequer. Because nine-tenths of the people would be living in their own homes we would have to take care of only one-tenth, so enabling the Exchequer to provide more money for other social objectives.
A property-owning democracy is a highly responsible one. It has been said often in the past that a man will take much greater care of his own home than


he will of someone else's, just as the company car is never as well looked after as the privately-owned one, which is popped in the garage and cleaned religiously, perhaps two or three times a week, while the company car lives out in the drive all night and in all weathers. Pride of possession creates a sense of responsibility. It is, therefore, socially right for the nation to have the highest possible level of home ownership.
I need not mention that home ownership creates mobility and provides an investment. One of my constituents recently told me that his home, a simple semi-detached house, which he bought in 1932 for £295, was now worth ten times that figure. He paid off his mortgage long ago and he told me, "This is my little nest egg. It was the finest day's work I did when I bought this house." The sadness of the situation is that his modern counterpart cannot do the same.
I want to see people in the lower income bracket being able to acquire homes of their own for the first time at prices which are reasonable. Prices today are thoroughly unreasonable and I am saddened by the exploitation that goes on. The exploiters are victims of the situation rather than victims by design. I want to see a situation created in which the circumstances do not demand such exploitation. The remedy is firmly in the hands of the Administration. I hope they will take action.
I should like to see my right hon. Friends go down as the most successful Ministers associated with housing the country has ever known. In the final analysis the nation wants more homes. I am, therefore, delighted to be associated with all the remarks that have been made in this debate.

1.39 p.m.

Mr. R. A. McCrindle: Time requires me to reduce the length of the speech I wanted to make, which will no doubt be to the great pleasure of hon. Members who have ventured out on this last day before the Christmas Recess.
I intervene mainly to make a few observations about how we can, in a practical sense, push forward still further the move towards owner-occupation. I should, perhaps, declare my interest in that for many years I have, as part of

my occupation, assisted people in the purchase of their own homes.
I wish at the outset to congratulate Governments of both parties on what they have done over the years to make owner-occupation very much easier than it was a decade ago. Nothing I shall say should be construed as a criticism of the building society movement. On the contrary, we owe a great debt to it, perhaps literally as well as metaphorically, because over the years, especially the past few years, it has opened up its coffers and tried to help as many as possible. But there is still room for a movement still further forward by the building societies. I hope that they will take kindly to what I shall say today.
I have never understood why, if a man goes into an occupation and pays for his pension during the whole of his working life, he cannot do the same for the purchase of his property. After all, lie looks forward to retirement and to being in receipt of a pension. Surely he will look forward to retirement and to having something in terms of bricks and mortar, which is his investment to pass on to his 'children. There is a case for extended mortgage repayments over the whole of a man's working life.
We are told that the average man in Britain marries when he is 23. That is the first statistic. If we accept that the average wage in Britain at present is about £1,300 a year, by the normal yardstick of a building society lending roughly 2½ to 3 times gross earnings the man will be able to borrow up to a maximum of £3,900. Most of us know that that is nowhere near adequate, certainly in the London area, unless the couple have been very successful and have saved a very large deposit. But if the repayment period were to be extended to the whole of a man's working life, it would then be possible to lend up to five times the individual's gross income. That would mean that the man on the average wage could borrow £6,500. That would bring him much closer to being able to take out a mortgage than he is at present.
Second, I should like to see the building societies develop a greater flexibility towards taking into account wives' earnings. They have to understand it as a fact of life in 1971 that a large percentage of women work, at least in the early years


of marriage. We all know that the facts of life equally teach us that that earning period can be brought to an end fairly quickly, and perhaps sometimes in a manner not altogether planned. The fact is, however, that the building societies could take into account a woman's earnings more than they do, and I will say how they could do it.
During the period when both the man and the woman are working and can afford a very substantial outlay, what should happen is that the mortgage is taken out over a shortish period of, say, about 15 years, but that the period of repayment is made flexible, so that if there has to be a reduction in the repayment when the woman ceases work to have a family, the period of the mortgage is extended to about 35 years, or perhaps over the period of the man's lifetime. If that were done, more young couples could borrow more. As this is the trend we all want to see. I can recommend it safely to the building societies. I know that some do it already, but I should like to see a few more adopt this pattern.
Third, I should like greater flexibility in interest rates. I mean no disparagement to the Building Societies Association, but I believe that the monolithic structure of this association as presented to the public does the movement less than the credit it deserves. In these days, when floating interest rates are fashionable in other spheres, the Building Societies Association could well get away with stating that lending rates can be between X and Y, and leave the building societies and their commercial instincts to decide at which rate they should lend to their borrowers. If this happened, there would be competition to a greater degree among the building societies. There is already competition in attracting funds from the public. Therefore, I see no reason why there should not be competition in lending to the public.
Anyone who has ever tried to get a mortgage on something like a maisonette, or a flat in some quarters, especially if the flat was not purpose-built, will realise that the number of building societies prepared to lend on that type of property is extremely small. But if there were a range of interest rates, it may be that one would have to pay fractionally more to

get an advance on a flat or a maisonette, but that is how the thing should be played.
Those are three ways in which we can expand still further.

Mr. Roger White: On the subject of interest rates, the public are puzzled and concerned that when Bank Rates rises the mortgage interest rates rise proportionately, but as we have seen, they do not come down proportionately when Bank Rate is reduced.

Mr. McCrindle: I agree that there is puzzlement in the public mind. The fact is, however, that no building society retains its rate of interest higher than it needs for one day more than it feels it must. It has to take into account the fact that it must continue to attract funds from the investing public. If there is competition from investments which pay better than building societies, the societies feel that they have to keep their rate of lending higher than ideally they would wish.
I have suggested some ways in which the movement towards owner-occupation could be extended, but I simply do not believe that in Britain we shall ever achieve 100 per cent. owner-occupation. or anything like it. People who pursue this in a doctrinaire fashion are pursuing a will-o'-the-whsp. If we reach about 75 per cent. we shall have reached the optimum.
I want to stress, especially to my hon. Friend on the Front Bench, that there will always be a continuing need for houses for rent. I frequently take issue with some of my hon. Friends who seem to have a doctrinaire opposition to the development of council properties. I do not believe, as may some hon. Members opposite, that there should be a continuing building of council properties whether or not the need exists. But in certain areas, particularly in some parts of greater London, there is and will continue to be a serious need for the development of council property. But there is also a need to try to encourage the development of privately rented property. Though movements are now certainly afoot in that direction, I have to say that, regrettably, we have a very long way to go.
I conclude by declaring yet another interest. For my sins, I am vice-president of an organisation called the Corporation


of Mortgage Brokers. The corporation was formed a couple of years ago because it was felt that some standard had to be laid down for the mortgage-broking fraternity. I am the first to concede—after a lifetime in this sphere—that there are a great many sharks in this business. Nowhere is it easier to take money under false pretences than it is from a couple seeking a mortgage to buy a property. Through the debate, I would suggest to the public that they could do worse than to find out who is their nearest member of this non-profit-making body, the Corporation of Mortgage Brokers. I hope I shall be forgiven if that sounds like a commercial plug.
The property-owning democracy of which we on these benches have spoken over the years is still a great aspiration of mine. We have come very far along the way to achieving it. I hope that some of what I have said will be taken up by the building societies and that if we have a similar debate a year from now we shall find ourselves still further towards our objectives.

1.49 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Paul Channon): The whole House will congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) on choosing the subject of home ownership for debate. He can feel justly proud of having done so, because of the widespread interest in the House. Many more hon. Members have spoken than in the average Christmas Adjournment debate, which is a reflection of the extreme importance of the subject.
Although I do not agree with everything that has been said, most of us can agree with the overwhelming proportion of what we have heard today. I agree that it must be a continuing and crucial aim of Government to encourage home ownership, which is not only good for the country and the housing stock but is probably the best investment a man will ever make.
My hon. Friend raised a number of matters that he wanted the Government to consider further. We shall consider all the suggestions made in the debate, and as we have regular contacts with the building societies I am sure that they,

too, will study everything said today. A number of interesting suggestions have been made. I agree that the prime mover in the change towards home ownership has been the building society movement and that continued rapid progress towards home ownership is best guaranteed when the building societies are active and have money to lend. In the first nine months of this year they lent a total of £1,960 million, only slightly less than the £2,027 million they lent in the whole of last year, which was itself a record year. The number of advances made in the first nine months of this year was 478,000, compared with 393,000 in the same period last year. The movement has also been breaking records in attracting new savings. Net receipts for the first nine months of this year were £1,370 million, compared with £1,011 million in the same period of 1970.
The whole House has also welcomed the fact that during this year we have seen the first reduction in the interest rate charged to borrowers for nearly nine years.
I welcome the initiative of the Alliance Building Society in producing a scheme for escalating mortgages. I am sure that the movement will consider what hon. Members have said about that. I am not quite so happy about longer periods for repayments as are some hon. Members. There are limits to the length of the repayment period. If it is too long, the borrower will find, in the ordinary annuity kind of mortgage, that he has paid off very little of the principal in the early years, which is very inconvenient if he wants to move house, and the reduction in the annual amount of repayment is not all that much. Therefore, we should not push that idea too far.
A number of hon. Members raised the question of building society loans to older people. The percentage of loans given to people of 45 and over in the second quarter of this year was about 13·8, which is not an insignificant proportion. I can announce one new improvement that is to be made to the option mortgage scheme, which will make it easier for elderly people to enter the scheme. Under the Housing Subsidies Act, 1967, a borrower normally has to go for an option mortgage at the time he signs the repayment contract. Changing to an option mortgage after


this date is allowed in special cases—if, for example, there has been
a substantial but not reasonably foreseeable alteration
in the financial circumstances of the borrower, which would have made it reasonable for him to give an option notice if the alteration had occurred before he borrowed the money.
That qualification about the alteration being not reasonably foreseeable rules out changing to an option mortgage in the normal course of retirement, because a person can foresee normal retirement, though not premature retirement. With the agreement of the Building Societies' Association and the other lenders' associations, that qualification will be deleted, so that in future a lender will be able, if he thinks fit, to let a borrower change from an ordinary mortgage to an option mortgage on retirement in the ordinary way. That is one further modest step which will be of some help to more elderly people when they reach retirement and wish to change.
On conveyancing costs, I note the views expressed, particularly by my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol, North-West and Epping (Mr. Tebbit), and I will draw them to the attention of my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, who is primarily responsible. He has put proposals to the Law Society, on which it is expected to report early in the new year. The proposals are, in brief: firstly, where property sells at £10,000 or over, to dispose of the scale system, so leaving it to the solicitor and his client to agree on a reasonable charge; secondly, where property sells at less than £10,000, to make the scale charges maxima, to enable the client to find a solicitor who will charge less than the maximum while still stopping the solicitor from charging more than the maximum; thirdly, to abolish the system whereby a solicitor acting for both parties can charge each the full scale fees.
The hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. George Cunningham) raised a number of points about tax relief on mortgage interest payments. He will not expect me to comment in detail. I do not agree with many of his points, though I am glad to learn that the principle that tax relief should be available on mortgage interest payments was common

to both our points of view. I should emphasise that many people have made their financial arrangements on the basis that they will receive that tax relief. It would cause complete disruption and a great deal of hardship if changes were ever made in the system to reduce the amount of tax relief available to them. The House would be very reluctant ever to make such changes, and I can give the assurance that this Government will never do so.
I could give a whole list of measures taken in the past year to help with home ownership, but I do not think that the House will wish me to do so in view of the time. The measures are well known.
I should like to say something to the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Ernest G. Perry) about the price of houses in London. I entirely agree with him about the difficulty. There is no quick solution to the problem. The only way to help with home ownership in London is to get more houses built for owner-occupation. We need more houses of all kinds in London. I do not want to go into the question of London housing, but it is certainly true that we need more houses for owner-occupation, which is one of the highest priorities in London. The figures for private enterprise building in London have been extremely low for the past few years, and I shall do my utmost to encourage it. The proportion of home ownership in London is lower than in many other parts of the country. That is bound up with the need to find land to provide houses for owner-occupation.
A number of hon. Members raised the question of house prices and land prices. I entirely agree that it is essential that there should be an adequate supply of land for house building. Hon. Members may have seen the answer of my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Development on the matter on 8th December, when he announced that the Government have taken a number of steps to help. He said that the Government have in action
… working parties on land surplus to defence requirements, on forms of partnership between local authorities and private enterprise, and, with local planning authorities and developers in the regions, to identify land suitable for housing. Major areas for long-term development have been set out in an approved strategy in the South-East region and my right hon. Friend will have the


strategy very much in mind in exercising his planning responsibilities."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th December, 1971; Vol. 827, c. 1287–8.]
I accept that there must be an adequate amount of land. We must try to identify where there is a shortage through local planning authorities having refused planning permission. I accept that that is one of the most important facets.
I believe also that it is essential that builders should be providing houses for the lower end of the market. That is where the largest share of their markets will be, and it is in their interests as well as the people's that they should cater for it. I appeal to the building industry to think very hard about the problem of providing houses for the lower end of the market, where there will be an increasing demand and an opportunity for them.
My hon. Friend raised the question of local authority mortgages. The City of Coventry has introduced a scheme whereby mortgages are granted based on the life expectancy of the property rather than that of the mortgagor, which of course also helps older people. If a person dies before the mortgage is paid off, the outstanding debt can be recovered by the sale of the house or by the granting of a mortgage to the next occupier. Any other proposals of this kind will receive favourable consideration by the Government.
I shall not go into the question of council house sales in detail. There is a difference of opinion between the two sides on this matter. The Government's view is that councils should sell their houses, and I noted what my hon. Friend said about Bristol. We shall be prepared to consent to an authority selling a house at up to 30 per cent. below the unrestricted market value where price and pre-emptive convenants apply. Birmingham has put forward a not dissimilar scheme. We welcome such schemes. I take the view that it is very sad when a local authority frustrates the wishes of its tenants in this way, but I recognise that that view is not shared on both sides of the House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Epping referred to new town houses. The momentum towards purchase in the new towns is still enormous, and 14,000 in-

quiries have been received in the new towns for house purchase. It is an overwhelming response. There are local problems, such as those involved with the Land Registry, which we are examining and which are being overcome. My hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. McCrindle) will be delighted to know that Basildon Corporation is concluding sales at the rate of 10 a day, which is not bad going.
There may be other points which I have not the opportunity to reply to now. I will carefully study what has been said. I am sure that the building societies will do so as well. The message of the whole House on this last day before the Christmas Recess is that we are all determined to go on promoting home ownership wherever possible and that we all share the objective that a larger proportion of our people should have the opportunity to own their own homes, because this is in the interests both of the individual and of the country as a whole.

SCOTLAND (FOREIGN INVESTMENT)

2.2 p.m.

Mr. Dick Douglas: I welcome the opportunity to raise, for the first time in the House in recent times, the initiatives which the Government have been taking to attract foreign investment to Scotland, but I am extremely disappointed that the Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office, is not here to reply, because much of what I have to say will refer specifically to his responsibility and to the visits he has undertaken abroad, particularly to Germany. I do not see why the Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Agriculture. Scottish Office, should have to bear the brunt of my remarks.

The Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Agriculture, Scottish Office (Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith): I was delighted to have the opportunity to answer the debate.

Mr. Douglas: I will await the hon. Gentleman's answer before I congratulate him on his delight.
I will deal first with the immediate short-term background to the initiatives


which the Government have undertaken to stimulate investment generally and foreign investment in particular in Scotland. Much stress has to be laid on what is loosely called "infrastructure". It is as well to remember that in July, 1970, the Under-Secretary of State for Development conceded that a vast improvement had taken place in Scotland's infrastructure by the high and consistent levels of public expenditure of the previous 10 years, but particularly under the Labour Government. One might well remind the House of these very high figures, and I take one or two examples of capital expenditure to illusatrate my case.
Between 1964–65 and 1970–71 the expenditure on roads increased by 116 per cent.; the expenditure on housing, taking these two years one with another, increased by 48 per cent.; expenditure on education, excluding universities, increased by 64 per cent.; expenditure on health increased by 94 per cent.; and expenditure on investment grants was running at an annual rate of over £69 million in 1970–71. Total capital expenditure by the Departments, the local authorities and the nationalised industries, taking these years 1964–65 and 1970–71, had increased by 96 per cent. It was against this background of high public expenditure that the Under-Secretary of State for Development could comment in July, 1970 about the improvement which had been brought about in Scotland's infrastructure.
If one looks at what had been happening in the Scottish economy in the 1960s, particularly the mid-1960s, which had enabled us to attract considerable foreign direct investment, some degree of the success of the policy adopted by the Labour Government is shown by the fact that, despite the rapid and, some might think, too rapid run down of the old industries—during the 1960s there was a fall of 100,000 jobs in mining, shipbuilding, metal manufacturing, textiles, rail transport and distribution—there was a considerable improvement in the structure of the Scottish economy and the job total as a whole remained buoyant.
If we also look at one of the characteristics of the attractiveness of the economy, we can see that the number of unfilled vacancies in the years 1964 to 1970 averaged 12,300, and the average

unemployment percentage over that period was 3·4 per cent. New industries were being created, many by direct foreign investment.
The 1967 survey by the Scottish Council, Development and Industry, noted that employment by Scottish-based North American firms had risen by 17 per cent. between 1964 and 1966, and that their investment had increased by 53 per cent. and their turnover by 50 per cent. It was estimated that North American firms accounted in this period for 24 per cent. of Scottish manufactured exports. These are not Government figures, but I think that the Government would accept that the survey was reasonably reliable.
Thus, when the present Government took office, they were confronted with a Scottish economy which had been considerably refurbished. A new industrial prospect was before the Scottish people, and it was freely admitted by the Under-Secretary of State for Development that this enabled the Government in 1970 to set about attracting foreign investment to the Scottish economy.
Between 22nd November and 1st December, 1970, the Scottish Industrial Promotiton Reconnaissance Mission—that is a lofty-sounding title—went to Germany. The purpose, we were told, was to assess the prospects for attracting West German industrial investment to Scotland and to suggest how best industrial promotion for Scotland in Germany could be carried out. We were further advised in the report that attention was focussed on West Germany, following the visit there in September by the Under-Secretary of State for Development. I wish the Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Agriculture to give some indication why the Under-Secretary of State for Development at that time pointed his very eminent and able officials in the direction of West Germany. Maybe they were mystified by the German figures for the increase in direct investment abroad which had gone up at a compound rate of about 20 per cent.
At no point before or after that date have the Government analysed the nature of such direct investment. They have never stopped to consider what direct investment might mean to an economy such as that of Scotland. What are the advantages of those embarking on direct investment? Broadly speaking, direct


investment by a foreign company is a symbol that the company feels that it has a quasi-monopoly advantage which can offset the disadvantage of playing away from home. What advantages do the Government see in German firms making direct investment in Scotland? I hope that the Minister will give us a reply.
The "German invasion" in the terms which the Government seem to have expected is unlikely to take place in Scot- land, but such an "invasion" has taken place in the United States. It is a reflection of the strength of the Deutschemark. German investment in the United States rose by more than six times in the years 1960–69 and nearly doubled in the period 1967–69. If the Government were really concerned about attracting a nation looking for markets in Europe and if they were really looking for direct investment for direct investment purposes only, they might point themselves in the direction of Japan.
Let us look at some of the points in the December, 1970, report. One was that of poor industrial relations in Scot- land. The report says that the Germans had expressed fears about being involved in a country with poor industrial relations. This was echoed in a speech by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, in another place on 24th November when he said:
… I sincerely believe that in any attempts to attract investment to Scotland one of the major disincentives is the bad reputation we have in this field.
The noble Lord really dealt with than point himself. He had accompanied the Minister responsible for the report on the visit to West Germany, and he said that included in the party was an American industrialist who came to Scotland 20 years ago and who operated a very large and expanding factory in Lanarkshire. The noble Lord said:
Not only does that man, having come to Scotland, run a very profitable unit for his American company, but he has had only five days of strike in twenty years.
If Scots can convince people that they are operating in an expanding industry and that proper attention is paid to the needs and constraints of modern industry, then the scars of bad industrial relations will become as unreal as they are unwelcome.
The Under-Secretary of State for Development said, a year after the original mission:
We have accomplished stage one of our objective. The longest stage and the follow-up of the opening we have made will begin right away.
The first stage was a long time in getting off the ground. What was involved in that stage? Let us see what happened to the Scottish economy in between the two visits. Was Scotland made more attractive to foreign investors? The key date is 27th October, 1970, when the Government abolished investment grants. Page 4 of the 1970 report says:
Although the financial and tax incentives offered by Her Majesty's Government to firms investing and creating new employment in development areas are of interest to those we met the incentives are not regarded, at least in the present form, as of paramount importance …
Has there been any change of view since then? I quote again from the debate in the Lords, from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Polworth, who said:
On the question of grants versus tax allowances I have had my doubts in the past but I am now convinced that in the end it is cash that talks. Liquidity has been the biggest problem of most developing companies, and cash, whether in the form of investment grants or regional employment premiums, is much the most effective encouragement. I believe that we should revert to the system of investment grants."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 24th November, 1971; Vol 325, c. 1007–53.]
Moving from investment grants to tax-based allowances has not made the Scottish economy more attractive. This was reinforced by Lord Clydesmuir. current Chairman of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, who said, dealing with the suggestion of free depreciation for capital equipment:
We have coupled this proposal with others including the reintroduction of a system of grants.
There seems to be no case from the point of view of domestic industrialists for a system of taxed-based allowances.
Let us look at the employment situation between the two reports. In December, 1970, the Scottish registered unemployed numbered 103,500. In December, 1971, they had increased to 141,100, an increase of 37 per cent. No wonder the Minister on his return from Germany could say, "There is a shortage of skilled labour and we were able to tell them that


it was readily available in Scotland." We had 141,000 people. If he had been really adventurous lie might have hired Hampden Park and invited all the unemployed and a few German industrialists and said, "Look, we have a capacity crowd of unemployed. We have the labour you do not have in Germany. This is the result of 18 months of Tory Government." If he waits until February he will have about 20,000 to 30,000 outside the gates of Hampden Park as well. Scottish unfilled vacancies averaged 12,300 over a seven-year period. At present there are just over 8,000 unfilled vacancies; there are 17 people chasing every available job in Scotland. That is a noble accomplishment.
What are we aiming at in terms of direct investment? How would German or other industrialists hope to finance capital development in Scotland or the United Kingdom? They have expressed some concern about the restrictions on raising finance in Scotland. Have the Government removed these restrictions? If German industrialists are to spend abroad, would they not use the Eurobond?
What bemuses me in this operation is trying to understand what particular skills are lacking in Scotland which mean that we have to go to German industrialists asking for help. The Under-Secretary said on his return that the Germans were interested in North Sea oil and in deep-water facilities on the Clyde. What is wrong with Scottish industrialists that they cannot exploit these potentialities if they are given the correct lead by the Government?
One of the things hindering the massive possibilities of North Sea oil is the denial of investment grants because the equipment involved is capital intensive, the profit flow is not immediate and there is a liquidity problem which can be rectified only by the Government moving away from their doctrinaire approach and introducing investment grants. In terms of deep-water facilities, are the Government sitting back and saying to German and other industrialists, "Hunterston provides"—as the Secretary of State likes to tell us—" unique geographical advantages. Come and exploit them. We cannot give the right en-

couragement or find Scottish industrialists to do this"?
Scottish workers are having a sit-in or work-in at the Plessey factory in Alexandria, which has not only workers available but extensive plant and equipment. Are the Government waiting to say to a German industrialist, "You exploit the situation. There are no Scottish industrialists willing to do so."?
Turning to the situation on the Upper Clyde, I regret, as I am sure everyone regrets, the tragic death of Hugh Stenhouse. It was a sad blow. The Government of businessmen have been incapable of finding a chairman for the company. The yard at Clydebank is, we suppose, waiting for an American industrial concern to build liquefied natural gas carriers—very costly ships. We are waiting to see whether the negotiations can be concluded. I hope they are. Are not United Kingdom companies willing to do this? Are the Government concerned only with trying to attract direct investment from abroad? Are they not capable of stimulating Scottish concerns?
The tragedy of the Scottish economy over the past 18 months is reflected in the belief that only if we have a regional policy which reflates the United Kingdom economy will Scotland achieve growth. That is the psychology. Regional policy is not a priority. What are the prospects for the next year or so? The Government have continuously said, "We have done all we can to stimulate investment. When we get investment going in the rest of the United Kingdom economy, investment will result in Scotland."
The current figures for investment in manufacturing industry do not offer any prospects of cheer to the workers of Scotland in this season of goodwill to all men. Investment in manufacturing industry for the fourth quarter of 1971 is estimated at £379 million at 1963 prices. In the three quarters of 1971, investment was 5 per cent. lower than in the corresponding quarters of 1970. No doubt we shall be told that we must await expansion of the United Kingdom economy. There are no signs of it except in the consumer industries. Lord Clydesmuir indicated that consumer-based booms will be of little help to the Scottish economy in the near future. If


the prospects for the Scottish economy are to be brighter, they will not be based in the short or medium term on direct investment from incoming foreign firms; they must be based on existing industry. What are the Government doing to ensure that existing industry gets the necessary scope for development in Scotland in 1972?
I welcome this opportunity of probing the Government's thinking about promotional visits to Europe and, in particular, to West Germany. I should like the Minister to tell us that firms are showing intentions of coming to Scotland and what they are likely to do which indigenous Scottish industries cannot do. I should like him to state the number of people they are likely to employ and where they will raise their capital. Will they raise capital on the Scottish or English capital market which Scottish firms and industrialists could raise themselves?

2.25 p.m.

Dr. J. Dickson Mabon: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) on choosing this subject for debate and on putting his case very constructively. Unfortunately, from time to time we tend to get involved in party battles which are rather sterile, but my hon. Friend's criticisms today have been put in a proper context and have struck a very good and constructive note which I hope the Minister will adopt, as I shall try to do.
There are three charges to be made against the Government on this subject—and I choose my words carefully. First, they do not appear to be fully convinced of the importance of foreign investment in Scotland. Secondly, even if that charge is wrong, they are certainly guilty of dragging their feet very badly on the subject. Thirdly, they show a very poor example to foreign investors by hesitating over the question of investment, which is urgent, in sectors which they proclaim to be essential to the Scottish economy.
Let me try to justify making those three charges. First, on the credit side, the Government have pursued the policies which we were pursuing when in office. I had the privilege, as Minister of State. of taking the E.E.C. Commissioner in charge of regional policies round Scotland in October, 1969. We did not simply

wish to advise the E.E.C. about the kind of regional policies which should be pursued in Europe: we wished to learn from them, and we hoped that, as a result of talks with the Commissioner, the interest of West Germany in Scotland would increase.
When we were in office we agreed to attend the Bonn Conference in September, 1970, in order to discuss further regional incentives, not only in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, but throughout Europe. However, the electorate decided that the Ministers who kept that appointment should be Conservative and not Labour Ministers. It followed that we would tend to concern ourselves with West Germany, and that is what has happened. But that was not the intention. The intention was to bring about European investment. In Scotland we have had a substantial amount of American investment, and very welcome it has been. Goodness knows what Scotland would be like if the 50 or so scientific and electronic firms had not arrived and stayed in Scotland; the situation would have been dreadful. That sector of our industry is as prosperous as it is in the South-East of England.
We are naturally anxious to have additional foreign investment in Scotland. but not at the expense of home investment. We want home investment to move in parallel with foreign investment. The Government are slipping back in this respect, as is clear from what my hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire said, and from the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. John Smith), who deduced from the recent survey by the Cambridge economists that incentives in Scotland, instead of being worth £112, were down to £102.

Mr. William Hannan: What about the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward Taylor)?

Dr. Mabon: I do not wish to refer to him because I want to rely on good witnesses.
Investment in Scotland is falling. The Government have deliberately discouraged Chevron Oil from setting up in Scotland. I saw the managing director of Chevron Oil the other day in Brussels. He confirmed to me that the North Sea


finds and developments in Great Britain did not deter his company from being anxious to come to Scotland. It wanted to compete in the oil market. Since this would add more jobs—what did the Secretary of State say? Not very many: 2,000 on building and 200 permanently—we ought to encourage, and certainly do nothing to discourage, companies like that.
Even if there was a good reason for turning Chevron Oil down—which I do not believe—it hardly encourages the others, particularly the way it was done, with the company kept dangling in Scotland since 1960 and with an inquiry, which took a long time and was the longest such inquiry in Scottish history, turning the company down on what, in my view, were rather specious grounds which have since been shown to have been untrue.
We have been told, too, that Krupp have been told to come on a visit to Hunterston with a view to seeing whether the company could invest in a steel foundry and plant on that peninsula. The company has not yet done this, and I can understand that in view of the paths of developments in the West German economy, but would it not be a tragedy if such a development took place elsewhere? I cannot understand the Secretary of State's position. I can understand his position in relation to other Ministers and to his hopes being upset by them, but I cannot understand his position in not encouraging a B.A.C. intervention at Hunterston. I think that the promotion bodies have taken far too long to establish Scotland West. The mission to Germany was thought up in our time of Government and it has taken so far 18 months to complete the first phase of the overseas journeys.
I think it is quite fair to say that although the Government may have done reasonably well in terms of what they are doing in propagating these things overseas, they have done so only very slowly, not at all at the pace they should. My third and last point is that if the Government want to encourage investment they have to make that investment much more attractive, and they must understand the need for investment incentives, investment grants, the need to encourage investment in any other way, to make

ventures into the Scottish economy attractive to foreign investors.
I ask the Government to justify their policy and to agree that they have not been very speedy in carrying it out, and I ask them to make a substantial announcement on incentives in the next few months.

2.32 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Agriculture, Scottish Office (Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith): I should like first of all to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) in tribute to the hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) on having the opportunity to open this debate and having chosen this very good subject for debate. It is one of very great concern not only to us in this House but to the whole of Scotland. We are, all of us, naturally anxious to take advantage of whatever opportunity presents itself to encourage investment.
Before dealing with more detailed subjects, I would say straight away that it is certainly my intention to deal with them—as far as I have time to deal with them—in a non-partisan spirit, because we have the economy of Scotland at heart and that is what is at issue. I shall deal with some of the perhaps more partisan remarks, but I want to deal constructively with these matters.
First I would apologise to the House on behalf of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Development. As I think hon. Members know, he has very long-standing engagements in Scotland today, in company with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, involving a number of visits to industrial concerns in Scotland, meetings with local authorities, with the Scottish C.B.I., and the Scottish Trades Union Congress. I think that, in these circumstances, the House will appreciate why he is not here and why I am in his place, but I must say again, as I did in an intervention earlier, that I am delighted to be in his place because this is a subject which interests me enormously and with which, as a Scottish Minister, I am every bit as much concerned as any of my colleagues in the Scottish Office.
I would first put out of the way one or two points which I thought tended to


be a little partisan in nature. I thought the hon. Member for East Stirlingshire was being a little less than fair in some of the comments he made about what the Government are doing in practical terms to deal with the unemployment situation in Scotland. I do not intend to go into past history; I do not intend to rake up the fact—for it is a fact—that under his Government, previously, more jobs were lost to Scotland than were created there.
One point which I would like to make to him, though, in relation to this debate on the question of investment grants against incentives in the form of tax relief, is this: the great point which he made was in relation to the extra liquidity which grants create, but I have not always found this to be the case among firms in my own constituency. The payment of grants under the previous Government did not in practice result in increasing liquidity as quickly as some of those who support that system try to make out. However, I say that only in passing.
One unfortunate point about the debate, if I may say so to the hon. Member, was that he tended to take rather too narrow a view of investment across Scotland. The hon. Member for Greenock was rather fairer in his remarks, and rather more welcoming of the part which foreign investment can play in Scotland. Whilst I am at one with the hon. Member for East Stirlingshire in that I would like to see more indigenous investment, more investment from Scottish firms and Scottish business men, I say to him that through our general policies, and in particular the special treatment which Scotland gets and the special development area status which the great area of Scotland has, to which the hon. Member did not pay a fair tribute, we have facilities one way or another to help industry to expand. Therefore, whilst we do want greater expansion of indigenous industry as well, at the same time I believe that the Government—all of us, the C.B.I., the S.T.U.C., the Scottish Council—have to make sure that we tap every possible source of investment.
Therefore I felt that it was slightly unfair of the hon. Member simply to talk as though the Government were concentrating upon and were interested only in getting investment from Germany.

This is not true. The Government, throughout all their policies in relation to industry generally and in the work which they have done, and quite apart from Germany—I shall say a word about this later—have demonstrated that we encourage initiatives over a much bigger and wider programme, in conjunction with other organisations, to which the hon. Member did not pay full tribute, to encourage investment in Scotland.
Turning to the main subject of this debate, having said how important it is to get indigenous investment, I must make it absolutely clear that it is our policy, as indeed it was of the previous Government, to try to encourage investment from overseas as well. To look back, as was fairly stated, over the past 25 years, it is most interesting to see that the great majority of the overseas firms which have come to Scotland have come from North America. Indeed, it is true to say that Scotland has been particularly successful in this area. Of the American firms which have come to the United Kingdom, about one-quarter have come to Scotland, and tribute must be paid to the work which the Department of Trade and Industry, and its predecessor the Board of Trade, and the Scottish Council have done to achieve this. As the hon. Member for Greenock said so rightly, these firms have firmly established the electronics industry in Scotland, and they have withstood, even better than some indigenous industry, the vagaries of the national and international economic climate over the years.
Further, we believe that our proposed accession to the European Communities will lead to an increased flow of industrial investment in Scotland from the E.E.C. countries, and, indeed, also from North America, because we believe that firms will be encouraged as a result of very much wider marketing opportunities which will be created. Scotland has much to offer. There is a tremendous unsatisfied need in European industry for skilled industrial workers.

Mr. Douglas: Does not the hon. Gentleman concede that the unsatisfied need in West Germany has been there for some considerable time? Will he give figures for German direct investment in the United Kingdom and United Kingdom direct investment in Germany to see who is coming off best?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: The hon. Gentleman must realise that we came into office only 18 months ago and that we had to lay our plans. The hon. Gentleman accuses us of dragging our feet, but we have not dragged our feet at all. Considerable preparation is needed for a campaign like this: it is silly to jump in at half cock. The hon. Gentleman does not realise the amount of work and time that has gone into these preparations and the amount of publicity that has been given to the campaign.
The hon. Gentleman also ignores one of the biggest factors, and that is the effect of our vote in October for entry into Europe. My hon. Friend's visit to Germany was well-timed to coincide with these wider opportunities in Europe. I completely refute his criticism on that point.

Mr. William Hannan: rose—

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I am sorry. I cannot give way. When we came into office in June, 1970, although a great deal of work had been done—and I pay tribute to the Labour Government and previous Conservative Governments—to persuade American firms and firms from other parts of the United Kingdom to come to Scotland, little work had been done to promote Scotland as an industrial location for European industry.
Germany had a booming economy and a consequent acute labour shortage and was importing a large number of foreign workers. In considering investment from Europe in terms of priorities—and this is a European and not just a German campaign—it seemed right to start with Germany.

Mr. Hannan: rose—

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Efforts have been made by local authorities in Scotland, and new towns have been created, but we were concerned that what was being done should be properly co-ordinated through a well-planned national campaign.

Mr. Hannan: The hon. Gentleman is surely aware that in the E.E.C. countries, including Germany, investment grants and not investment allowances are given?

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: The hon. Gentleman completely ignores the econo-

mic circumstances of those countries. The whole point of Germany was that opportunities for further investment were there and German industrialists were looking elsewhere. The matter which the hon. Gentleman raises has nothing to do with investment incentives.
To continue to answer the hon. Member for East Stirlingshire, and not to be diverted into party politics which the hon. Gentleman said it was not his intention to mention in this debate, we decided to do something about opportunities in Europe, to create an organisation and to give it money, which is the crucial thing.
In May this year we set up a joint Scottish Council venture under the chairmanship of Lord Taylor, and we are grateful to Lord Taylor and his colleagues for having undertaken this important task. The Committee has two main responsibilities—first, to conduct a campaign of promotion and publicity to attract industrial investment to Scotland and, secondly, to co-ordinate the activities in this area of regional and local agencies. The membership of the Committee is widely drawn and includes representatives of local authorities, industry and the S.T.U.C.
The Committee will operate only in Europe; it is specifically for this purpose. In the attraction of industry from other parts of the United Kingdom and North America, the Scottish Council will continue to operate as it has done before, and the other areas will not be part of the responsibilities of the Committee. At the same time, we do not intend to detract from the activities concerned with these other areas, and they will continue.
The next most important thing was to make sure that this body had sufficient funds at its disposal to mount a vigorous and effective campaign. That is why the Government have made a grant of £70,000 in the current financial year, rising to £100,000 next year, with further contributions from the Scottish Council and the regional bodies which support the Committee's work. We are grateful for the response to our request for support from these other bodies; it is extremely useful.
The Committee has set up its own separate staff unit in the Scottish Office,


and has a full-time publicity and public relations officer in Germany who will be living in the Frankfurt area. The Committee has prepared a considerable quantity of attractive and comprehensive publications, which we hope will give information to firms who may be seeking to invest in Scotland.
Coming to the time-scale, the major criticism I have of what was said by the hon. Member for East Stirlingshire is that the attraction of industry is not an activity which can be taken up overnight and laid down again after yielding quick results. It is very much a long-term operation which we expect to continue over a period of years. The hon. Gentleman knows, as the hon. Member for Greenock knows from his experience in the Scottish Office, that even for industrial firms the time scale of decisions is long. It will be two to three years before we see any results from these activities, which are only just starting.
Although I cannot say with any accuracy where this will lead us, we believe that it is a good and useful initiative. One simply has to start some time. My hon. Friend visited Germany a month or two ago with the mission headed by Lord Taylor. The visit was arranged by the Committee, and my hon. Friend was accompanied by members of the Committee and its staff. The purpose of the mission was to launch a campaign to attract industrial investment to Scotland by bringing to the attention of influential persons in industrial and financial circles Scotland's potential as a modern industrial base. The party visited many places and met many industrialists, hankers, financiers and others, and was extremely well received wherever it went.
We at the Scottish Office are convinced that the best way to handle this activity is to conduct it in partnership with the Scottish Council, which has had such a long and successful experience in North America, and there is no question of the Government withdrawing from this task. We are striving to give to the Scottish Council a new energy and a new organisation to which we shall give sufficient funds to enable it to do the job properly, funds which were never matched by those available to the Scottish Council or to any other organisation in Scotland during the previous Administration.
This important new initiative has got off to a good start, and over the next few years it will play its part in the revival of industry. As I said earlier, we do not rely on this alone, but it has its part to play. It is important that Scotland should be represented in Europe and that European industry should be represented in Scotland.

PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN

2.50 p.m.

Mr. James Hill: I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the topical and timely subject of the education and care of pre-school children.
At present local authorities are prevented from opening new nursery classes by circular 8/60 entitled "Nursery Education." This even prevents authorities from making use of spare rooms within existing schools for the creation of nursery schools. The circular was amended in July, 1964, and subsequently in December 1965, to make it possible then for authorities to open nursery clases or to create classes if by so doing they would increase the net teaching force by admitting children of women teachers who would then be released to teach full time or part time in primary and secondary schools. In effect, each additional nursery class opened had to enable the authority to secure the services of four qualified women teachers, including part-time teachers at their full-time equivalent value. This circular was issued at a time of acute staff shortage, especially in infant and junior schools, and has to be seen in the context of what were then rapidly increasing annual birth groups.
The later 1960s saw both a turndown of annual births and a rapid increase in the number of teachers qualifying each year. The most encouraging feature concerning teacher recruitment has been the marked increase in the number of young teachers wishing to teach in infant and first schools. Authorities, especially those in Southern England, are now faced with the problem of selecting from an embarrassment of candidates rather than having to seek out married women teachers and to encourage them to return to their profession before their children have reached school age.
In these changed circumstances it would be advantageous to offer nursery education much more widely, and this could be done without detriment to pupils of compulsory school age. I am sure we are all agreed that the years up to five are crucial to the intellectual, linguistic, social and emotional development of young children. It is during these years that the rate of development is at its greatest. This fact has been recognised by the pioneers of nursery education.
Recent research, including that carried out by Dr. J. W. B. Douglas, Dr. M. Kellmer-Pringle and the latest Plowden Committee research project follow-up, has re-emphasised the importance of these years of education for children who are able to make an early start at school. Therefore, during this period children are developing their knowledge of language, learning how to organise information and to formulate questions—all essentials for securing maximum advantage from later education. They learn to cope with their own emotions and to make social adjustments to adults and other children.
If they are allowed to develop fully, it is important that they should enjoy a controlled environment adjusted to their needs and offering a rich variety of experiences and stimuli. Ideally, all children should have the opportunity to attend nursery school for at least one or two years before being admitted to their first schools. In this way they would be able to enjoy the use of premises, furniture and equipment chosen especially to meet their needs and would be taught in small groups by teachers trained for work with younger children and supported by two-year trained nurses.
Since 1967 Southampton has been able to provide opportunities for nursery education throughout the southern central sector of the city, but requests for additional nursery classes could be authorised to serve the needs of children in other parts of the city. It is clear that at this moment of time there will be no major extension of nursery education. Consequently, we must explore alternative means to help the young children.
The expansion of nursery education in socially deprived areas under the urban programme has proved that all Govern-

ments now recognise the importance of compensating for an inadequate home environment at an early age in a child's development. Nursery classes and playgroups to a more limited extent can provide opportunities for imaginative play and social contact with other children. This is vital if we are to put an end to the scandal of children entering full-time education while lacking basic verbal skills.
However, I stress the value of nursery education for all children. No home, however good, can provide all the facilities of a nursery school such as trained teachers and enough children of a similar age. More and more mothers who are cooped up in high-rise flats cannot be expected to provide adequate space or the necessary stimulus for children on their own. The importance of the preschool years for development of a child's intelligence and capacity to learn is already acknowledged in my earlier remarks. Thus the efficiency of our educational system must be determined to an extraordinary degree by the success or failure of our pre-school policies.
It follows, therefore, that nursery education should not be regarded just as a rescue operation or as a luxury for those parents who can afford to pay for it, but as part of the normal educational provision that a country should be able to make available to all its children.
Secondly, I would point to the need for full-time as well as part-time provision for the pre-school child. Between 12 and 35 per cent. of mothers with children under five work outside the home. Thus about 750,000 children are involved. The rise in illegal child-minding in deprived communities, especially among West Indians and West Africans, is often due to lack of pre-school facilities to provide care for those children whose mothers have usually been forced to go out to work because of financial pressure. Every day thousands of babies and young children are being left in cramped rooms, deprived of comfort and toys, and this is happening in their most formative years. Even the amended legislation is largely concerned with health hazards, but it is acknowledged that the legislation is more or less unenforceable. The lack of adequate facilities is proved beyond doubt by such facts as those which I shall describe: by the existing


demand in the long waiting lists; by the figures for existing provision in relation to the potential demand; and by the rapid expansion of the voluntary provision.
There are about 2½ million children between the ages of three and five and of these about 34,000 are in State nursery schools and some 228,000 in State primary schools. The latter number includes about 150,000 "rising fives" many of whom may have been put into a class with much older pupils and may therefore not be receiving nursery education. Fewer than 100,000 benefit from what may be regarded as the ideal start: six terms at a State nursery school. About another 35,000 attend private nursery schools or classes registered with the Department of Education and Science so that at the most just over 15 per cent. of children aged three and four get the opportunity to attend a nursery class and most research figures insist on a figure of only 10 per cent. A further 5 per cent. of this age group are children attending private or State-aided nurseries and creches or are in residential homes. In these, although the standards of care and health are maintained, the educational preparation which marks the nursery school stage is very low and is more usually wholly absent.
The day nurseries maintained by local health authorities and voluntary organisations under the National Health Service Act, 1946, usually are better equipped than the private ones in terms of play space and staffing. It should also be noted that many of the private establishments registered as nurseries are really nursery schools or play groups and, therefore, are unable to meet the needs of working mothers for full-time care for their children.
The voluntary play groups which have sprung up provide in some form or other for up to 5 per cent. of this age group. The Pre-School Play Groups Association caters for between 160,000 and 170,000 children. The standards of these groups are variable; although organisations like the Save The Children Fund try to provide trained teachers, there is no control by any education agency. In the main, they are situated in the better-off suburbs, and the chances of their taking root on a large scale in working-class areas are remote at present.
Thus to summarise, more than 75 per cent. of children will receive no form of pre-school service. Of the 20 to 25 per cent. who do, 5 per cent. are in play groups where they might or might not get excellent preparation, and 5 per cent. are in nurseries which have little or no educational function.
Such figures do not give any indication of the uneven distribution of provision between regions. There are county boroughs, such as Plymouth, Enfield and Bromley, with populations of more than 300,000, and counties like Sussex, Devon, Leicestershire and Wiltshire, with populations of more than 400,000, which have no places in maintained nursery schools.
A similar situation exists in relation to day nurseries. Generally, there is little correlation between need and the regional pattern of provision, although this should be emerging in nursery education as it is expanded under the urban programme. However, the current priority in education is the rebuilding of primary schools, which is justified on the ground that secondary education has been receiving relatively more resources in recent years. It is true that the time for rebuilding many of these schools is long overdue. But when will the balance be redressed in favour of the under-fives who receive only 2 per cent. of our national education budget? Surely the rebuilding of primary schools offers a unique opportunity for expanding nursery education at a minimum cost by including a nursery wing in each school built.
If, in spite of the strength of these arguments, the commitment to the provision of universal nursery education does not materialise in the near future, much can and should still be done to improve the provision for the under-fives. I welcome the promise of a further provision in deprived areas. But the aim should be a comprehensive and inclusive service in all areas in the near future. All local authorities willing to go ahead on their own should not be prevented from so doing by administrative restrictions such as those contained in circular 8/60.
Local authorities should be encouraged to extend their pre-entry provisions to compensate in some degree for the lack of full nursery education. Southampton


has given recognition to the needs of young children by its present admissions policy and by the support and encouragement that it has given to heads of schools to make pre-entry provisions.
The statutory age of entry to school is at the beginning of the term after a child's fifth birthday, but only where staffing and accommodation permit. The pre-entry system whereby children attend school for one or two half-days in the previous term has meant that almost all children are making a gradual move away from their homes and into school during the two terms prior to becoming statutory fives. Headmasters and headmistresses report that they have seen great benefits accruing to children as a result of the pre-entry scheme. The children are able to learn gradually how to adjust to larger groups of children than they will normally meet in their homes or at play. They are able to meet their new teachers who will be such an important part of their lives in the near future. They become familiar with school buildings and with school routines. What is perhaps even more important, the pre-school medical examinations are carried out during this period, and defects which might hinder a child's educational progress can be remedied early.
Under the present Southampton policy, children whose fifth birthday falls between 1st September and 31st December are admitted to schools as "rising fives" in September at the end of the academic year. Consequently, they enjoy a full four years' first school course. Children with birthdays between 1st January and the end of the spring term are admitted in January and enjoy three years and two terms. Children whose birthdays fall between the period from the beginning of the Easter holiday to 31st August are admitted at the end of the summer term and so enjoy only three years and one term in their first schools. Thus, through the lottery of birth, some children enjoy a full four-year course while others have little more than a three-year course, and it is among the latter group of children that a disproportionate number of poor readers is likely to be found.
In the recent past, it has not been possible to devote efforts to extending opportunities for young children because

other demands upon resources have had to take priority. Preparations for the introduction of first schools had to have the first priority. For several years, the increasing sizes of successive age groups entering schools have been putting great pressure on accommodation and staffing. There have now been several developments which provide an opportunity to move towards a fresh approach. The accommodation difficulties associated with the introduction of first schools have been overcome. The sizes of the age groups entering first schools have declined slightly. The supply of teachers trained to work with young children continues to show a steady improvement.
Any new system for starting school must take account of the following major factors. First, the transition from being mainly at home with mother to being a full-time pupil must be a gradual process if the child is not to be subjected to undue physical and emotional strain. This can be achieved in some form of pre-entry system and if the majority of pupils start school on a mornings only basis until they are ready for full-time education.
Secondly, the teachers receiving these children must be fully conversant with the needs of young children and the support of a nursery nurse must be available to make sure that there is a good ratio of trained adults to deal with all the children's needs.
Thirdly, the size of classes should be appropriate and uncrowded accommodation must be available, together with the appropriate equipment and furniture. My right hon. and hon. Friends know the sad state that education was in at the date of the last General Election. My right hon. Friend has expanded all sectors of education, giving priority to primary schools, as promised in our election manifesto. This debate gives me an opportunity to thank my right hon. Friend for the opportunities and the generous provisions that she has made in my constituency. We are extremely grateful.
Everyone on this side of the House realises that, over the next four years, my right hon. Friend intends to make available £190 million. That is a staggering total. I believe that it is the largest amount ever pressed into this sector. We also know that more than £70 million has


been allocated for minor works in 1971–72 and 1972–73. Even the 8,000 nursery places provided in deprived areas since June, 1970, compare magnificently with the 10,000 places approved by the Labour Government in the whole of their six years in office.
All this, and the additional burden of raising the school-leaving age to 16—something to which the Labour Party gave only lip-service—has put a tremendous strain on the resources of the Department. But, despite all this, will my hon. Friend convey to his right hon. Friend the feeling that the 1964 and 1965 Amendments to circular 8/60 are now of historic value only. If any go-ahead education committee can make space available and squeeze its financial lemon, let it be free to do so. Encourage it with pre-school entry and the results will soon be there to be seen in our children.
I should like to finish by reading a paragraph from a letter from the Chief Education Officer of Southampton:
After a careful study of the accommodation problems affecting our first schools and departments, I think that 12 first or primary schools would be able to house a nursery class without great difficulty and with only a minimum of modifications. As the teacher supply position continues to improve, it should prove possible to staff nursery classes at all 12 schools within two or three years at the outside. If a phased scheme were introduced, the Authority would be able to provide furniture and equipment as part of its normal estimate procedures. Ail 12 schools serve catchment areas where the children would undoubtedly benefit considerably from nursery school provision.
Surely my hon. Friend must agree that this is the sort of progressive thinking that we on this side of the House must encourage. I am sure that the debate has shown that the problems of nursery education can be solved in future and that he and his right hon. Friend will do all that they can.

3.12 p.m.

Miss Joan Lestor: I congratulate the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. James Hill) on raising this subject today. I agree with almost everything that he said, because he made the case for the pre-school child admirably.
I want to make only one, as it were, party point. However, I do not wish to make this a party debate because those of us who have stayed for it—there are

precious few—are obviously concerned with the pre-school child.
The sin which was committed when the ban on nursery schools was put on in 1960 has left all of us who care about the pre-school child with an enormous burden of trying to start something again when the barriers, as it were, have been put up.
I realise that I have only a little time because the Under-Secretary has to make his comments. In 1944 very brave words were spoken about the pre-school child. We now realise how slow progress has been since. We must remind ourselves that when the lobby by the under-fives and their mothers took place here in 1968, those mothers were the under-fives in 1944 for whom nursery schools were promised. At the present rate of progress those under-fives who came with them will be lobbying again in 20 years for their children.
I do not share the hon. Gentleman's optimism about the speed of development of nursery school facilities, although I hope that he is right. I hope that this Government and successive Governments will show a change of heart in this direction.
The hon. Gentleman made the absolutely valid point, of which we do not make enough, that, for the most part, we offer nothing to our pre-school children until they go to school, and then we expect them to go to school full time at the age of five or five-plus. We do not give them any facilities for nursery education, although we often include in our figures for pre-school provision those "rising fives" who are in primary schools. One of the biggest sins we commit against pre-school children is to say that we have no facilities for them before the age of five, but that we expect them to take a full day's schooling, in the main in a class of 30 or 40 other five-year olds. The minority, who have been to nursery school, play group, or even day nursery, have at least had the advantage of socialisation and experience with other children and a staff ratio which is much higher than in any primary school dealing with children of five or under.
I want to repeat a plea which I have made before, and which was also made by Dr. Yudkin a very long time ago, it seems. The needs of pre-school children


throughout the country vary enormously because the nursery school or play group does not meet the needs of the working mother. We do not know sufficient to make dogmatic statements, but I believe that we need a survey throughout the country to discover just what is the provision for and need of children particularly in areas where mothers go out to work. Many mothers of pre-school children go out to work and they are often forced to send their children to child-minders, sometimes unregistered, because the day nursery provision in the area is so poor. I realise that this is not the responsibility of the Under-Secretary. However, until we get some kind of "marriage", as it were, for the preschool child between the provision that is made by education and that which is made by the social services through the day nursery and play group, we shall always miss out on the needs of certain groups of pre-school children.
I am aware that the Labour Government did not do anything in this respect, although I personally wanted them to do so. I have always believed that there should be a joint administration for the pre-school child between what is now the Department of Social Services and the Department of Education and Science. I have never understood—I understood even less after I had spent eight months in the D.E.S.—how it is that if someone sends a child to a day nursery it comes under the Department of Social Services and one has to pay but that if one is lucky enough to have a nursery school in the area, it comes under the Department of Education and Science, as all pre-school education should after the age of about two, and one does not pay for that. The play group movement, to which all are indebted for the provision which it has made for young children, is making an educational provision which comes under the Department of Social Services. Until we sort this out and decide what we want for our pre-school children, whether it be baby-minding or education, we shall still continue to have these gaps.
I do not want to reiterate the other points raised by the hon. Gentleman, but they are absolutely valid. I do not want to put words into his mouth, but I believe that primary education begins

before the age of five. Therefore, we must merge into the primary school-building programme provision for children under five. if the Under-Secretary and his right hon. Friend cannot yet see their way clear to expanding nursery school facilities, I am sure that if the empty classrooms could be made available many voluntary organisations would be delighted to make use of them. The urban programme was the first step, after many years, in making provision for children. I and many others welcomed it as a step in the right direction. What I regretted, and still regret, is that when we have the criteria of deprivation as a provision in education it is often not the best standard to use. The measurement of deprivation can vary enormously. For example, many children in materially well-endowed areas are very deprived indeed. It is not necessarily the children from poor areas who suffer from deprivation. I am sure that no hon. Member would disagree with that statement.
I have always believed—and I say this as one who taught the under-fives for many years—that it is during the third and fourth years that a child is at its most curious. Education is about curiosity and how to harness and stimulate it. At the moment we are missing the stage at which a child is most receptive and when attitudes to learning are formed most readily. I have never understood why we picked on the age of five and said that it was only then that education should begin.
I hope that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test is right when he says that the Government will launch us into a tremendous expansion of nursery education. But if they do not, and it is my feeling that they will not, I hope that they will look closely at what is being done by voluntary effort for the under-fives, and that in the meantime they will give every assistance to the play group movement.

3.20 p.m.

Mr. John E. B. Hill: I am glad to support what has been said from both sides of the House, and particularly to welcome my namesake the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. James Hill) on joining us in trying to get better provision for the under-fives. My


hon. Friend gave us a classic description of the problem and of the partial and uneven progress that is being made. I am glad that he is joining the hunt against circular 8/60, and I hope that if we cannot get rid of it in the short term it may be possible to make further relaxations and include as qualifying returning mothers not only trained teachers, but perhaps trained nurses and other people, such as social workers, whose services as married women in professional employment are urgently needed by society as a whole.
Every piece of research turns up further confirmation that the pre-school years are decisive in forming a child's attitude and setting probable limits to the development of his potential. In today's Daily Telegraph there is an interesting article on the findings of the National Children's Bureau, under the direction of Dr. Kellmer Pringle, pointing out that by the age of seven so much is decided almost for life and therefore how important are the years leading up to those first two years in school. There appears to be some doubt about the necessary money being available to enable this most important research to be continued. I should like to think that there was no possibility of the Government's reducing their support for the National Children's Bureau.
It seems that local authorities in general are making uneven use of such powers and facilities as exist. Some local authorities—and my own is an example—are doing their best, and I hope that the Department will be able to record the good practices and circulate them so that those authorities which have not been very enterprising to date will in future make use of such provision as is allowed.

3.23 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. William van Straubenzee): I am sure that the House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. James Hill) for initiating what must necessarily be a short but none the less important debate, and I am delighted that the hon. Lady the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) and my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill) who has been particularly associated with this problem, have been

enabled to take part in the debate, however shortly, too.
We have briefly been lifting our eyes to the hills, and we must now descend to the depths with my contribution. Let me first establish quite clearly that on one matter at least, namely, the value of pre-school education, we are on common ground. Even without the evidence of research about the mental development of young children and the rapid growth which takes place up to the age of four or five, we should, I feel sure, be influenced by the conviction of thousands of parents and teachers that preschool education means indeed a real benefit to children. The Hadow Report contained the memorable phrase
What a wise parent will desire for his own children, a nation must desire for all children.
That is perhaps the most persuasive case for nursery education and it was reffected in remarks made from both sides of the House this afternoon, and I do not take issue—far from it—with any of the arguments put forward, from either side, in that respect.
At the same time, I recognise that my hon. Friend and others are hoping for something more than a sympathetic voice. I was asked not only to share my hon. Friend's objectives but to say when it might be possible to provide something, in concrete terms, to achieve them. I fear that I must say, in answer to this short debate on the last day of term, as it were, that I have no Christmas surprise in store. I hope, however, that I can put the matter in perspective.
It is true that at present we are simply unable to do as much as we should like in expanding facilities for the under-fives. The reasons are familiar enough, and some of them were given by my hon. Friend; nursery education is relatively expensive to provide and, as he rightly said, our resources are fully stretched to necessary improvements in the education of children of compulsory school age.
It is often true that desirable improvements must be tackled one at a time, and, as my hon. Friend said and as has received widespread approval, my right hon. Friend is for the moment giving priority to her programme of primary school improvements. I hope that, even though it may sound discouraging, this point will be well taken. Having made


it, I will now take a rather more constructive approach to the whole problem.
First, the advances. A limited advance has been made under the urban programme. I realise that in comparison with the 140,000 places for children under five in maintained schools—this figure includes nursery schools and nursery classes attached to primary schools—the 18,000 nursery places which will have been approved by the end of this year under the urban programme may not seem significant. This figure includes the six classes in the Southampton local authority area to which my hon. Friend referred.
But the importance of this programme is that it has enabled the Government to concentrate resources in the twilight areas of cities where children most need the stimulus of nursery education. The hon. Lady the Member for Eton and Slough rightly made the point that many areas outside the scope of the urban programme also have social and environmental problems; for example, children in remote rural areas must often contend with surroundings which are bleak and isolated. But the downtown urban areas are probably the most acutely deprived, and it is there that the selective provision is most needed.
The fact that virtually all the resources available to the Department under the urban programme have been devoted to pre-school education reflects, I hope, its importance as a weapon against social and mental deprivation.
Hon. Members referred to the playgroup movement. I know that they understand this clearly, but perhaps for the sake of the record I should make it abundantly plain that statutory responsibility for the legislation governing preschool playgroups rests with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services, and the hon. Lady made this point.
For obvious reasons we in the Department of Education and Science take a keen interest in their activities and are in close touch with the Department of Health about their future development. The Department of Education and Science makes an annual grant to the national headquarters of the Pre-School Playgroups Association to help to

develop its valuable advisory services—my right hon. Friend recently increased this to £7,000 a year—and to the Save the Children Fund, to which reference has been made. This fund does admirable work in organising playgroups in deprived areas.
I very much welcome the help which individual playgroups receive, in cash and kind, from local education authorities. Playgroups deserve special praise not only for their direct contribution to the need of young children but because many of them actively involve a number of mothers in the activities of the group and in the education of their own children.
The House may feel that this adds a new dimension to pre-school education. It can be especially valuable in the deprived urban areas. These are often, as we know only too well, in unpromising surroundings for a movement which is based on self-help and voluntary effort. Nevertheless, it is encouragingly true that many playgroups have been started in inner city districts and urban programme grants to the value of £250,000 have helped to establish them on a firm basis. As only one example, in Southwark a playgroup adviser appointed by the local social services department has used an urban programme grant to establish playgroups supervised by local mothers, many of whom attend part-time courses at the college of further education.
Many local education authorities have recognised the potential of the playgroup movement by making grants to individual playgroups, helping with the equipment and premises and organising courses for supervisors and appointing advisers. In one area groups of playgroups are able to turn for advice and support to a team of infants' school teachers under the direction of the L.E.A. adviser for nursery and infant education. We are anxious to build on what has already been achieved, and the two Government Departments concerned are together actively considering what further contribution playgroups might make to the needs of the under-fives. I am sure that the House, and the hon. Lady in particular, will recognise that a good deal of discussion will need to take place before the lines of future development emerge. But the House, and the hon. Lady in particular, can be assured that we are not in the meantime being idle.
In considering the needs of the under-fives the traditional distinction between educational provision and social provision tends to become somewhat artificial. Education and care are different aspects of an overall concern with the mental and the physical well being of young children, and all children who, for one reason or another, are in need of extended day care as a substitute for the normal home environment will also benefit from the stimulus of nursery education. It is in recognition of the complementary rôle of education and other social services that the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Social Security are discussing together not only the rôle of playgroups but the interrelationship of the needs of the under-fives over the whole range of provision.
As an example of active co-operation, seven experimental projects have been approved under the urban programme which will combine the facilities of a nursery school and a day nursery. The first project has already started to admit the first children, and all the local authorities concerned are discussing their plans with the Department of Education and the Department of Health. It is too early to say how far the idea of joint provision will be taken up by other local authorities, but one of the aims of the consultation I have mentioned between the central Departments is to evaluate the success of the experimental projects as they develop.
My hon. Friend and the House generally will appreciate that I have had time only to touch very briefly on some of the points made. I will write to my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South on the points he mentioned about research. He will forgive me if I naturally want to check the facts on that first. I am sorry that I have been unable to say more at this moment about the future expansion of education for the under-fives. Nursery education is gradually becoming, however, more widely available. The urban programme will have a significant impact in the areas of greatest need, and local education authorities have steadily increased the number of nursery classes which they may establish provided that married women teachers are thereby released for work.
I have taken careful note of what has been said by my hon. Friends the Members for Southampton, Test and Norfolk,

South. Many local education authorities, including Southampton, have found it possible to admit children under the statutory age to school. That is apart from the additional nursery classes provided under the urban programme.
Moreover, I have been interested to learn, directly as a result of this debate, something of the novel pre-entry scheme introduced by the Southampton L.E.A. and described by my hon. Friend, under which under-fives are invited to attend their future infant school for a few sessions a week before they are ready to attend full time. I understand that they come with their mothers, and that the scheme is designed to make their first experience of school rather less bewildering than it can sometimes be. I commend this initiative.
We recognise that the demand for nursery education, of which the success of the playgroup movement is a good illustration, far exceeds the supply of places available. In considering when and how far it will be possible to meet the demand within the resources available, we shall certainly bear in mind all that has been said by hon. Members on both sides. today. Debates like this, initiated so ably by my hon. Friend, help greatly to throw a searchlight upon a problem that I well understand is strongly felt in many parts of the country.

LAND DRAINAGE AUTHORITIES

3.37 p.m.

Dr. Edmund Marshall: In drawing the attention of the House to some of the problems arising from the operation of our present land drainage system, I would first refer to the statement by the Secretary of State for the Environment on 2nd December, when he enunciated his proposals for regional water authorities. He then specifically excluded from the terms of his sweeping reforms any reorganisation of land drainage authorities. When I questioned him about that, he replied that this exclusion was because land drainage reform
was not considered necessary for the main strategy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd December, 1971; Vol. 827, c. 684.]
I submit that reform of the land drainage system is necessary in the interests of many sections of the community involved in some way or other with our present


land drainage arrangements. Because those arrangements have been so closely concerned with the present river authorities, which are to be reconstituted under the Government's proposals as regional water authorities, we have a good opportunity of simultaneous reorganisation of land drainage authorities. Without it, we are in danger of having a modernised structure of local government and of water and sewerage authorities alongside an antiquated structure of drainage authorities.
I understand that our present land drainage arrangements exist to serve three purposes: firstly, the improvement of agricultural land for the purposes of cultivation; secondly, the prevention of flooding and danger; thirdly, the conservation of water in rivers and other watercourses. While to some extent those three purposes tend to overlap, a conflict of purpose has also tended to grow up within the system between those concerned solely with the improvement of farmland and those concerned in the system solely by reason of holding residential property within the area of the drainage authority. These people are concerned more with the avoidance of flooding and danger.
The present structure of our land drainage authorities seems designed chiefly to cater for the agricultural interest. I feel that there is a conflict here, not only of interest but also perhaps between Government Departments involved. I hope that I can say it without seeming ungracious or ungrateful to the hon. Gentleman who is to reply to the debate, but I think that it is symbolic of this divergence of interest that we should have here a spokesman of the Ministry of Agriculture rather than someone from the Department of the Environment.
The financial arrangements for supporting land drainage are based largely and historically on the principle of benefit—that those who stand to gain most from the improvement of land values because of land drainage should be the ones who pay the drainage rates. This system makes sense only in the context of the agricultural interest involved in land drainage. When one comes to the people involved simply by owning houses in a

drainage district, the principle ceases to have much meaning.
The system of electing members of internal drainage boards, whereby more votes are given to the owners of land of more value, gives a weighted preponderance to the large land owners in such elections. It is amazing to me that there should be such a weighted electoral system still in operation in what we have come to regard as our modern democratic society. The effect of it is in my experience to leave most of the elections to internal drainage boards uncontested, with the nominees of the large land owners generally returned unopposed. The Minister has been unable to tell me what proportion of such elections is uncontested, but my guess is that it must be high. This is another way in which the system is somewhat geared to suit the agricultural interest involved in land drainage.

Mr. John E. B. Hill: The membership of these boards requires a considerable knowledge of drainage. It follows, naturally, that land owners and farmers would be amongst the most likely candidates, since they know about land and draining.

Dr. Marshall: Membership of this House requires a considerable knowledge of the way in which the country is run, but we are elected to it on a system of one man one vote and that to me is how democracy should operate.
I have talked about the way in which the present arrangements for land drainage have been suited largely to meet the agricultural interest. I grant that this may have been all very well years ago, but things have somewhat changed as development of the countryside has introduced a new social pattern. Increasingly, urban areas have grown out into country areas and more and more people are living in the countryside and working in towns.
This is all part of the process of the merging of the interests of town and country life which the Government recognise in their proposals for local government reorganisation. There should be some recognition of this as we attempt to build a new structure for our land drainage system. People whose only


connection with land drainage authorities arises because they own a house in a drainage district are naturally concerned with the system because it may help prevent flooding of their property. They have no direct interest in the improvement of surrounding agricultural land.
This pattern is repeated many times in my constituency. The whole of the Borough of Goole, after which my constituency is named, is included within the boundaries of two internal drainage districts, namely the Dempster drainage district and the Goole and Airmyn drainage district. In the constituency, too, there is the township of Thorne which almost entirely falls again within the areas of two drainage authorities, the Black Drain Drainage Board and the 'Tween Bridges Drainage Board. There is the added complication that these two boards fall within the area of two distinct river authorities, the Yorkshire Ouse and Hull River Authority on the one hand and the Trent River Authority on the other. Altogether there are 19 internal drainage boards covering parts of my constituency and in nearly all of them I come across householders who feel aggrieved by the present arrangements and the way in which they are faced with demands for the payment of land drainage rates.
There have been some cases where a man has bought a house, moved in and been completely unaware of his liability to pay drainage rates until receiving the first demand. I agree that this is something which should be dealt with by the legal profession, but it is an added complication causing grievance among householders later. Many people feel it should be up to local authorities to look after their drainage problems. They resent having to pay drainage rates in addition to the general rate. More and more people are baffled by the strange routes followed by drainage district boundaries which so often seem to separate identical properties on ground at the same height above sea level. It is even possible for a drainage district boundary to sever someone's garage from his house so that he pays drainage rates on the garage but not on the house.
While an expert can appreciate how the boundaries have been drawn up, with the knowledge of the known highest

flood levels and a contour eight feet above that, that does not matter to the householder who is often baffled by such arrangements. In some villages in my constituency this has created feeling between different sections of the village. Further, boundaries do not always fully correspond to the areas where flooding is most likely to occur. Some of the worst flooding that has occurred in the Goole constituency in recent months was in an area excluded from the nearest internal drainage district but completely surrounded by that district.
In many cases which have come to my notice the drainage board will accept no responsibility for getting something done to relieve flooding problems. This is another weakness of the system. Internal drainage boards have statutory powers to undertake drainage works, but they are not made to carry out statutory obligations. Their powers are permissive; no one can force them to use them. In such a system, the principle of benefit which is often talked about as being the main principle of our drainage arrangements is meaningless for householders.
Drainage district boundaries can be reviewed, but not more than once every 10 years, and drainage rate exemption orders can be made for specific properties. In the last 10 years, 218 such orders have been made. Under Section 25 of the Land Drainage Act, 1961, arrangements can be agreed between drainage boards and local authorities covering their district for the total income otherwise derived from the collection of drainage rates to be paid by local authorities from the general rate fund. While this tends to iron out some of the anomalies to which I referred earlier, it gives an unexpected bonus to owners of agricultural land who then benefit from general derating.
The procedures for adjusting boundaries are somewhat cumbersome. They are not easily understood by the public. When one looks at the patchwork of 368 internal drainage authorities in England and Wales, some of them covering less than 1,000 acres, one readily appreciates the administrative difficulties in carrying out boundary adjustments or making exemption orders.
In a recent review of the boundaries of a drainage district in my constituency, the reviewing body—the river authority—was unaware that a certain row of


houses existed at the edge of the district. The changes which were made as a result of that review did not become known to the internal drainage board concerned, which continued to levy drainage rates upon the land even though it had been excluded from its district, and the board is now having to repay those rates. I am grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for the attention he has given to this case, and I mention it purely as an example of the administrative confusion which can occur from having a multiplicity of boards covering very small areas.
Those are the main problems. I am speaking mainly from the point of view of householders who own property within the drainage district. The heart of the problem is the divergence between the agricultural purpose of land drainage and the flood prevention purpose affecting the community as a whole. Householders' interests are distinct from farmers' interests, and that distinction must be recognised in the operation of land drainage arrangements.
It is probably my function in a debate of this nature to talk more about the problems than about the solutions. I accept that it is not easy to find solutions to problems of this nature, but in the financial arrangements for drainage rates all householders should be covered through the local authorities in whose areas they live.
On the agricultural side perhaps we have to have means of raising finance for land drainage, based not on boundaries of historic importance but more perhaps on a register of agricultural land. I am thinking of the fact that at present river authorities are able to levy drainage charges on land which is not within the internal drainage district. It would seem to me that some system of this nature might be applicable right through the area of a river authority.
It seems that the time is now ripe for a thorough review and, if possible, a thorough reorganisation. The drainage system as it operates in this country has indeed baffled many people in the community. Coming into this as one representing a constituency which has so many internal drainage boards I ask that a thorough investigation be made at this

time of the possibility of reforming the system as a whole.

3.56 p.m.

Mr. Jerry Wiggin: As a representative of a constituency which was probably one of the first in this country ever to be reclaimed from the sea by civilisation, I speak with a little self-interest, but, of course, I appreciate the very deep concern of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) for his part of the country.
There is nothing new about the conflict of interest to which he draws the attention of the House this afternoon. The fact remains that rain will fall upon every acre of this country whether of agricultural land or of concrete, and it will, of course, run off the roads and concrete and urban development and flood neighbouring agricultural land. This conflict of interest has been examined by previous Governments for many centuries, and it is fair to say that at this moment of time we have probably reached a better compromise than ever before. I advisedly use the word "compromise" because this is what it must be.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about rateable values and problems of charging for the services necessary to disperse rainwater and to prevent flooding. I seriously suggest to him that it is the owner of agricultural land and the occupier of agricultural land whose whole livelihood suffers when drainage is inadequate. When a drain gets blocked in an urban area and there is flooding of a road or a hold up on a road, the outcry quickly has the matter put right, but if there is a field in which nothing can be grown because the run-off has been too great from the neighbouring development and the ditches and rivers have not been adequately opened up, that is a problem for only one individual land owner or occupier. While the hon. Gentleman's constituency may have 19 drainage boards he must accept that there are very large areas of the country without such facilities. Having farmed in part of a river authority's area where there was no drainage board I can assure him of the disadvantages.
When he speaks about rates and the costs of running drainage boards perhaps he will cast his mind to the other


aspects of the financing of river authorities the greater part of whose money comes from urban councils, cities, and so on, and equally, the majority of (he representation on those river authorities is proportional to the amount of money which goes into them.
I have no wish to deprive my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary of proper time in which to reply to this important debate, except to say that the whole question of water and of the circular which has been issued, and the—to my mind, vital—question of drainage of all land, will have to be considered substantially and in detail by this House—though I doubt whether the Christmas Adjournment is the right time to go into that detail. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will convey to his right hon. Friend the importance of drainage to the wealth of the country and the agricultural community. If he wishes to make substantial changes, he will have to consider carefully where improvement can be made upon the present system.

4.0 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Anthony Stodart): The hon. Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) has taken a great deal of interest in land drainage problems. This is not surprising, as I understand that there are in his constituency the whole or part of no fewer than 23 internal drainage districts, although I understood him to say that there were 19. At any rate, no one could fail to appreciate his concern about drainage boards and the interests of the drainage ratepayers.
Land drainage in England and Wales has had a long history, and legislation on it goes back over 400 years. The present organisation of drainage boards is governed by the Land Drainage Acts, 1930 and 1961, and by Part IV of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1968.
As the hon. Gentleman referred to it, I will interpolate a few words about the Report of the Central Advisory Water Committee. Land drainage and fisheries were excluded from the terms of reference of that Committee because, as the report recognises, there were no problems in these spheres comparable to those relating to water conservation and the control of pollution.
The future of the organisation for land drainage and fisheries has been reserved for further consideration after consultations which I shall shortly be having with the interests involved. The concern of my right hon. Friend is to ensure that, in the new circumstances created by the proposals for the reorganisation of water and sewerage services, land drainage and fisheries will continue to be efficiently organised, and our purpose in consulting the various interests is to seek their views on how this may best be done. The new circumstances did not require a review of the responsibilities of internal drainage boards.
There are, as the hon. Gentleman said, just over 360 internal drainage districts in various parts of the country, covering 3¼ million acres. As my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) brought out, if obliquely, most of them are concentrated in the Fens and in Yorkshire. The common feature of all these drainage districts is that they are in lowland areas. There, special local problems exist requiring regular drainage works, such as an internal drainage board can carry out to improve the cultivation of the land and to protect the land, houses, and other property from flooding.
Drainage districts must include only such areas as will derive benefit or avoid danger as a result of drainage operations; and so the boundaries are related to flood levels. This provides a realistic measure for assessing those areas which would be likely to suffer from flooding. The work the boards do is vital to the safety and well being of those areas. Naturally those who benefit are those whose property and land is protected as a result of the work that is done.
The hon. Gentleman referred to what one might describe as the obscurity of many of these drainage boundaries. The boundaries of internal drainage boards are not fixed for all time. It is always open to a river authority to submit a scheme to alter the boundaries of a drainage district and there is statutory provision to enable a specified number of ratepayers to petition a river authority to make such changes. Over the years there have been a large number of boundary alterations. There is no reason why there should not be more. Indeed, within the last 10 years, while no new


drainage districts have been set up in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, eight schemes have been confirmed to reorganise districts, mainly by bringing the boundaries up to date. This is admirable, and I hope that it will continue while facilities for so doing exist.

Dr. Marshall: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the boundaries of any particular internal drainage district can be reviewed at most once every 10 years?

Mr. Stodart: I will seek that information and will let the hon. Gentleman know the answer. There is one principle which is fundamental to all land drainage legislation. It is that those who derive special benefit as a result of drainage operations should bear the costs of work done on their behalf.
This principle has been reviewed by several independent committees in modern times, notably by the Heneage Committee which reported in 1951, but none of them felt justified in recommending any deviation from it. The boards recover their expenditure through drainage rates; that is, of course, expenditure not covered by direct grants, to which I shall refer later. On the whole I feel that those who pay these rates receive reasonable value for their money. I certainly do not think it inequitable that the cost of this work should be borne by those who benefit directly in this way.
This leads me to the important and not uncontroversial subject which was touched upon by the hon. Gentleman as to the method of electing members of drainage boards. Historically, the principle that those who benefit should pay has led to special voting rights and the electoral provisions in this respect differ from those which govern national and local government elections. Basically, the number of votes any owner or occupier can cast at an election varies from one vote to a maximum of 10 in each capacity. But each drainage ratepayer, however small, has one vote whether he is owner or occupier. This scale of voting is laid down in the 1930 Act. This was reviewed by the Heneage Committee but it made no recommendations for change.
I have to cross swords with the hon. Gentleman on one matter when I say that

we must bear in mind that the work of drainage boards is primarily agricultural in character. That is my view, and I hold to it. Within certain limits the voting arrangements give the larger vote to those who contribute the largest part of the cost of the drainage board's works. There is an element of differentiation in the voting power but, while it departs from one man one vote, it is far from going to the length of £1 one vote.
By leaving some extra voting power to the man with the big rateable value, something is done to prevent the numerous urban rate payers inside the drainage districts—in terms of the relatively small contribution that each makes to the cost of flood prevention—from completely swamping the national interest in the land and the interests of farmers who have so much at stake and who individually make much bigger contributions. On the other hand, the maximum of 20 votes does very little to reflect the interests, say, of a very large industrial concern like a big power station. But it stops it from dominating the board as it would if its contributions were matched proportionately by votes. On the whole, I think that the system provides a reasonable amount of justice.
The boards are chiefly concerned with improvement works and maintenance on the minor arterial watercourses in their districts; but some take on large flood prevention and pumping schemes.
Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that many lowland areas have to receive into their districts the water which drains from the uplands. I know the hon. Member feels that it is unfair that the drainage ratepayers should have to foot the bill for work needed to cope with this additional water.
I entirely appreciate this point of view. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have my own problems about this. But there are provisions in the Land Drainage Act, 1930, which can be of help here. Section 21(3) makes provision for river authorities to contribute to the expenses of internal drainage boards, where it is fair for them to do so because of the quantity of water coming off higher ground.
Any contribution the river authority might make would of course help to relieve the burden of the rates in the district. But action under this provision has to be initiated locally by the drainage board. It must present its case to the


river authority; and it is for the latter to consider whether assistance would be justified. If this is refused, or if the board considers that the amount of the contribution is inadequate, it can appeal to my right hon. Friend. He considers the views of both sides. Thus we have a means of resolving any serious local differences.
I now turn to the suggestion that the cost of land drainage operations undertaken by internal drainage boards should be spread more widely, by making it a charge on local authorities who would meet it through their general rate. This idea has been considered many times before. It reflects a common impression that the whole cost of land drainage operations is met by the drainage ratepayers alone. But this is not the case.
General ratepayers everywhere—including those in upland areas where there is no land drainage problem at all—make their contribution towards drainage operations through the precepts of the river authority on the county and county borough councils. This recognises the broader community benefit derived from work carried out by river authorities on the main rivers in their areas, which carry water from the uplands to the sea; and the same applies in the case of sea defences which protect lowland coastal areas from tidal flooding.
There is also the very substantial contribution made by the taxpayer through the grants which my Department gives to river authorities and internal drainage boards, in order to assist them in carrying out much-needed improvements as well as new works in their areas. In this way, the cost of land drainage is already spread over the whole community, but those who live in drainage districts and derive particular benefit from the special work which is done there do have to make a special contribution. I believe that this is reasonable.
Even so, there are other possibilities of a solution to this sort of problem if the drainage ratepayers feel strongly about the matter and can persuade their local authority to make use of the powers available to it under Section 25 of the Land Drainage Act, 1961. This enables any local authority to enter into agreement with an internal drainage board to pay in a lump sum the aggregate of the drainage rates that would otherwise be

collected by the drainage board from individual drainage ratepayers.
Here again, however, the initiative has to be taken locally. Only the local authority can decide either to spread the cost through the general rate over the whole of its area or limit it to those who live inside the drainage district.
The power is thus entirely permissive, as it must be in matters such as this which involve so closely the prerogative of the local authority and the interests of its electors.
Equally, it is for the drainage board to decide whether it would want to enter into an agreement of this sort. If there were general local support, it seems to me that such an arrangement is eminently sensible and reasonable. It could operate to the advantage of both the drainage board and the local authority.
I know there have been difficulties about this in the hon. Member's constituency. I can only suggest that he should take the matter up with the river authority and see whether it can use its good offices to secure the co-operation of the drainage board concerned. My right hon. Friend has no power to intervene, so it would be quite wrong for him to try to do so.
On a more general point, I would like to make it clear that, although most drainage boards are elected bodies and enjoy a measure of autonomy within their districts, they are still subject to some control by the river authority. In particular, the latter have default powers which it can exercise if the drainage board is not doing its job properly, and if any land in its district is likely to be injured by flooding or inadequate drainage. If need be, it can exercise all or any of the powers of the drainage board. It would even be open to it to petition the Minister for an Order to enable it to take over all the powers and duties of the board. Obviously, there are statutory safeguards for the interests concerned, but the mere existence of these powers should be enough to ensure the boards do not fall down on their job.
To sum up, the present organisation of drainage boards and the system under which they levy their drainage rates is not so inflexible as might first appear. Both the organisation and the rating system have by and large worked well


over the years—I dare say that the hon. Gentleman will be disappointed by what I am about to say—and my right hon. Friend sees no need for any substantial change just now. Obviously we shall pay careful attention to what the hon. Gentleman said and we shall consider the points which he has made.
Present legislation affords means by which sensible solutions to particular problems can usually be found, given good will, common sense and the cooperation of all the organisations concerned.
An adequate supply of water is one of the blessings of this life. To have too little can make for great misery. To have too much in the form of flooding is equally disastrous for those affected. To prevent flooding, action must be both resolute and swift, and those who are to act must have the necessary powers to do so effectively.
I should like to place on record the appreciation of both my right hon. Friend and myself for the work which the drainage boards do. It is of great value to the country.

ENVIRONMENT (STOCKHOLM CONFERENCE)

4.18 p.m.

Mr. Laurance Reed: When the House resumes after Christmas we shall be in the year chosen by the United Nations for their conference on the human environment. The conference will be held at Stockholm in June and it has four principal objectives: to alert public opinion to the importance and urgency of environmental problems; to determine what problems can be solved, in whole or in part, through international co-operation; to develop more efficient working methods on national and international levels; and to urge international bodies and organisations to take a greater part in the fight against pollution. In short, the conference aims to make an evaluation of the present state of the world environment and, hopefully, to spawn new international agreements to curb pollution of the atmosphere and the oceans.
The world, of course, will not suddenly become a brighter and whiter place

as a result of this conference. As one commentator has said, Stockholm is not a magic new detergent for all environmental messes, but it can provide a framework and a structure in which the Government can assess some of the main problems which they face and decide how to set about solving them. Indeed, it is perhaps not unfair to claim that Stockholm has already succeeded in its first objective of alerting public opinion to the environmental crisis, since it has given much on-going activity in this field a point and urgency which it might otherwise have lacked.
Britain has played a leading part in the preparatory committee for the conference and also in the various inter-Governmental working groups that have been established. In their preparations the Government have sought to benefit from a wide dialogue by encouraging private individuals and voluntary organisations to submit their views and opinions, and at the beginning of this year my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment set up four working parties to assist him in his deliberations.
One of those, led by Lady Dartmouth, was on the human habitat; another, under the leadership of Sir Eric Ashby, was on pollution control; a third was on resources management, chaired by Ralph Verney; and a fourth on the rôle of young people in improving the environment was under Dennis Stevenson. I understand that the reports of those working parties will be ready for submission early in the new year, and that their findings will be published in good time for the conference.
In this country there is a growing awareness that more attention must be given to the qualitative, and less to the quantitative, aspects of technological change, and that when planning for the future we must take into account the social costs of damage to the environment and integrate ecological factors with economic programmes and decisions. The environment is coming to be seen as a datum indissoluble from the organisation and promotion of progress itself.
Anybody who studies pollution of the environment is quickly made aware that


the problems exceed the traditional political and economic framework. Pollution has no respect for political frontiers, and anti-pollution measures necessarily have an important economic and commercial significance. Measures taken by one country are liable to penalise certain sectors or industries of that country vis-à-vis competitors who may pay less attention to the adverse effects of pollution or who may have very different ideas about the way in which the costs of combating pollution should be met.
The fear of distorting competition and investment then becomes a brake on progress in fighting pollution, and at the same time disparities between the laws, regulations and administrative provisions relating to standards and procedures can create technical obstacles to trade.
For those reasons a policy for the protection of the environment must necessarily transcend the national framework and the subject is par excellence a field for decision at the international level.
There is, of course, a considerable amount of work already in progress on an international basis—the Economic Commission for Europe. The Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organisation, U.N.E.S.C.O., N.A.T.O., the World Health Organisation, the World Meteorological Organisation, O.E.C.D. and the Council of Europe all have some responsibilities in this sphere.
One of the things which Stockholm will have to sort out is how far the existing network of international organisations is adequate, and whether any new organisational arrangements are required. Before that can be decided there must be some agreement about what needs to be done internationally.
I wish to suggest five main spheres for action. First, scientific research. We must be careful to avoid wasting limited technical resources. The research work of the major international organisations should be co-ordinated so as to avoid all unnecessary duplication of effort. There is also a good case for initiating a common programme of research methods and techniques for measuring pollution.
Second, resources management. Where a defined environment or resource is owned or used in common by several

nations, it is important that provision should be made for joint management and conservation. I have in mind single river systems, major deltas, tropical rain forests, enclosed seas and so on.
Third, standards setting. If we are to avoid any disruption or distortion of trade, it is essential to align quality standards and maximum permissible limits, whether these are for incorporation in purely national legislation or under international agreements.
Fourth, inspection and enforcement. If rules and standards laid down internationally are to be meaningful, there must be some machinery for ensuring that they are being properly applied, along with machinery for settling disputes that may arise in relation to the interpretation of agreements.
Fifth, data storage and retrieval. It will be impossible to say how rapidly or in what form the environment is either improving or deteriorating unless it is carefully monitored and statistics are collected. Nor can proper standards be set without accurate data.
The consensus has emerged that all of this can be effectively dealt with principally on a regional basis and without the need to create a new super agency for the environment.
I am sure that that is right, and I accept the view, that the work of the individual agencies of the United Nations can be effectively co-ordinated by creating a small policy evaluation and review unit which can become the centre or brain of the environmental network.
The one exception that I would make to this is data storage and retrieval. To my mind there is an unanswerable case for setting up a single global centre for collecting, processing and disseminating data to provide real time information about the state of our environment. I suppose that it will be called the Doomwatch Agency. As I see it, a global observation network should be set up, based on the existing monitoring systems, at the national level, with information inputs from member countries and from international organisations being fed into the centre.
If the system is to be effective as regards coverage and reliability, speed, accuracy and so on, then there will have


to be some harmonisation on the methods of measurement and interpretation. If a single surveillance agency finds favour at Stockholm, I hope that the British Government will put in a strong bid to have it located here. Britain is the home of very few international organisations, yet we are at the centre of the world's telecommunication system and I can think of no better home for it.
The economic problems of pollution will also figure prominently at Stockholm, for the obstacles to a clean environment are more economic than technical in nature. The costs of pollution suppression can be astronomical, and the higher we set our standards the more steeply the costs will rise.
But the problem is not whether pollution should be stopped altogether, as is the view of some people. It is really a question of how far it can be or should be reduced. After all, the more money and brains we expend on suppressing pollution the less resources there will be for other desirable expenditure. The question is how much prosperity should be sacrificed for how much environmental purity.
According to the Royal Commission, the benefit should equal the cost, but at Stockholm there will not be any agreement on that because this necessarily involves a "value judgment", and I suspect that the judgment of the developing nations will be very different from the judgment of the industrialised nations.
It is important that we try to reach an agreement at Stockholm about who should pay for the costs, otherwise we may find that we shall disrupt international trade or slow down our attempts to improve our environment for fear of disrupting international trade.
In Britain we take the view that the polluter should pay. This is usually interpreted as meaning that the polluter must pay for the costs of complying with the higher standards set by legislation; of paying for the clean-up costs or the damage done to victims and property, or simply paying the penalty for violating the law. But the plain fact is that many costs resulting from pollution are not always borne by those who cause the pol-

lution or even by the purchasers of their products. It is still true today that for the most part the community at large bears this cost. When the polluter does not pay, the external costs are not fully taken into account by industry and expenditure on reducing pollution remains below the level which the social costs would truly warrant.
Most countries like Britain—Britain perhaps led the way in this—have laid down quality standards to safeguard the environment, which are enforced by regulatory authorities, such as our river authorities or the Alkali Inspectorate. These standards tend to be fixed, however, at a level governed by economic criteria and not so much at a level that is environmentally desirable. At the same time, economic factors tend to dictate the pace at which the standards are applied and enforced. We have seen that in relation, for instance, to the Alkali Acts, where we all know that progress has not always been as rapid as we would have wished.
I believe, therefore, that in addition to legislation on minimum standards we should seek at Stockholm some kind of economic incentive, some kind of mechanism, as a result of which it will pay the polluter to cut down on his waste and improve on the legislated-for standards.
There are only two ways in which we could achieve this. We could impose a tax penalty on pollution-generating activities and, equally, give a tax reward for pollution-free processes or products. Alternatively—this would be a revolutionary step—we could stop allowing the environment to be exploited as a free resource for waste disposal purposes, establish property rights in it and charge the polluter for the right to discharge or emit waste there.
By these means I believe that we can provide a stimulus to industry to reduce pollution and cut down waste. All pollution, whether it is up the chimney or down the drain, is waste. If the defilement of our environment is a crime, so too is waste in a world faced with rapid depletion of its natural resources.

4.34 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths): I am extremely pleased that my hon. Friend


the Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Laurance Reed) has raised the important subject of the Stockholm Conference, in which he has taken a deep personal interest. I congratulate him on the considerable research and reading he has done, and even more on the deep and original thought he has put into it and into his speech today.
The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment is a unique and important occasion, because for the first time it brings together virtually all the nations of the world to discuss the environment which we all share. There is no longer any such thing as a purely national environment. Today we are all coming to realise that the oceans, the atmosphere and the ecological systems of the world are interconnected; that they affect all mankind and must therefore be looked on as genuinely international questions. For example, the discharge of pollution by the River Rhine when it enters the North Sea is as much our affair as it is Germany's, for it could harm the breeding grounds of fish around our own coasts. Similarly, we depend on oil to support our economy, but the international traffic in oil is a potential hazard to the shores of all the nations past which our tankers sail.
For these and other reasons, the Government warmly welcome and support the United Nations Conference on the Environment. We are playing a leading and influential part in the work of the Preparatory Committee and of the intergovernmental Working Groups. This is as it should be, because Britain has a great deal to contribute. We started with the handicap of being the first heavily industrialised nation. We have a very large population in a very small island. But despite—or perhaps because of—the stress of these circumstances we have been one of the first nations to take effective steps to manage our environment and control pollution. We have a framework of law and an executive apparatus for protecting and improving the environment which is the envy of many nations which will be represented at Stockholm. We have, for example, an integrated planning system controlling land-use and with it the location of public works, housing and industry. The prevention of pollution is one

of the chief objectives of that planning system.
We can also point to remarkable progress. Over the past 10 years the air of our great cities, notably London, has been made as clean as or cleaner than that of any other great industrial city in the world. Despite our great population density we have a large and increasing proportion of our country devoted to green belts and national parks. We also have, and must cherish, wide areas of unspoiled yet productive countryside.
Our rivers, too, are not dirtier but cleaner than they were a century ago—and progressively they are getting cleaner. With the huge new investment which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment announced earlier this year and the reorganisation of the water and sewerage industry which he is proposing next year, we can be confident that our fresh waters will not only meet our rising demands but will increasingly provide recreational amenities, offering a water lung for our people and quiet havens of retreat for wildlife and flowers.
Our first priority, however, in this country as in our presentation at Stockholm, is not only to protect the amenities of those who already have many to enjoy but rather, through derelict land clearance, home improvements and urban renewal, to provide a better environment for those whose surroundings are at present unedifying and indeed squalid. This is the special concern of my right hon. Friend. I am confident that at Stockholm all present will be intensely interested to hear from him about the organisation of the world's first integrated Department of the Environment which, unlike all others, not only has responsibilities across the whole subject of land, water and transport but also has executive powers and the means to carry through its policies.
My right hon. Friend's approach to the Stockholm Conference can be stated simply. We welcome the Conference's objectives as a whole, and we intend to make a positive contribution to its success. However, we are pursuing a selective and pragmatic approach, for our concern, like that of my hon. Friend, is not with talk but with action. That is why we believe very strongly that the conference would do best to concentrate on issues that are truly international, urgent and above all capable of solution


at present. No conference, however grand, can posibly cure all the world's problems in one meeting, and if we try to attempt too much the outcome may well be the production of rather more rhetoric than results.
Therefore, problems which fall entirely within the competence and responsibility of individual countries—for example, the disposal of toxic wastes on land—in our view are best left to national Governments to handle, although, of course, we should want to exchange information about experiences with other countries and help one another in visits, technical committees and training. We strongly believe, too, in the value of the regional approach. I take just one example. A final text for a convention to regulate the pollution of the sea by dumping in the North-East Atlantic is nearly finished and will soon be considered by Ministers. We also expect within the E.E.C. to join in the working out of common regional policies for the environment wherever these are appropriate. The regulation of emissions from motor vehicles is perhaps one good example of where we may start.
At the wider international level, we are very conscious now of the six points made by my hon. Friend, five of which, as he may well know, are already on the Stockholm agenda. The Government intend to lay particular stress on three areas where Britain has much to offer and, I believe, much to gain—marine pollution, monitoring and international organisations. All of these, I believe, are genuinely global matters. I believe also that in all of them rapid progress is capable of being made.
The Government have already contributed heavily to preparatory discussions on these subjects and I am glad to tell the House that the active rôle played by our officials has been warmly welcomed by the Secretary-General of the conference, Mr. Maurice Strong. Our rôle, too, has often been influential on important occasions.
Our general approach to the Stockholm Conference can therefore be summarised as proceeding along the following major guide lines. The first is to support the broad aim of the conference so as to focus world attention on environmental problems as a whole. The

second is to maintain a pragmatic and selective and above all constructive approach, giving priority to those proposals which are timely, feasible and of genuine international concern.
Thirdly, we shall press for the better ordering of international organisations so that the appropriate agency or body should handle proposals for which it is competent. At the moment, there is a great deal of duplication and overlapping among the international agencies and our broad view is that the creation of still more new and expensive international organisations is undesirable. The important thing is to make better use of existing organisations and to achieve better co-ordination among them.
I take note of what my hon. Friend suggested about the need for a small review body to report from time to time on progress being achieved along the lines that might be agreed at the Stockholm Conference, and I was interested in what he said about an information retrieval centre with real time computers able to provide the necessary information. I can tell him that there has been discussion on a world centre of environmental information but that this has gained little support so far. The feeling is that a "global brain"—if I may put it that way—is not the urgent need. It could, of course, cover a mass of data but not all the data would necessarily be useful and much could be quickly out of date. Not all of the data would necessarily fall within the specialised knowledge of the small central staff that might run the system.
We nevertheless do favour a referral system, as it were a switchboard, putting a person or Government who needs some specialist knowledge in touch with the Government or agency which already has it. As a first step the switchboard or direct system would almost certainly gain endorsement from many of the countries to be represented at Stockholm.
The fourth guideline of our policy will be to use our best offices to provide coherent, sensible and well co-ordinated schemes for international monitoring, especially of background air pollution in relation to human health. In particular we shall support moves towards agreement on the control of marine pollution.
Fifthly, within a rising programme of aid to developing countries we see a


need to ensure that all the various facets including its impact on the environment of those countries are properly balanced. To put it over-simply, it is no good providing aid to under-developed countries if in the process we pollute and damage their environment.
I turn to the specific arrangements being made—

Mr. Gilbert Longden: Are the Government to say nothing at Stockholm about what is popularly known as the population explosion which in my view is the greatest threat to our environment?

Mr. Griffiths: I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall, but I think he will accept that in the context of the selective and pragmatic approach it is better to concentrate on those areas where we believe we have something special to offer, where we believe we can achieve definite progress in a short time. I accept what my hon. Friend says; this is certainly one of the main sources of environmental pollution.
Dealing with the specific arrangements, we have already contributed several major documents to the conference secretariat. The first of these is a report containing detailed information about our experience and achievements in the management of the environment and the controlling of pollution. Our other contributions so far include a paper on monitoring, a paper on marine pollution, a paper on international standards and their appropriateness. I bear in mind what my hon. Friend said about air standard settings. There is also a paper on the United Kingdom approach to the inclusion of environmental considerations in our aid for developing countries. These papers will be printed and distributed to all participating in the conference and will be available in this country too.
In addition my right hon. Friend has been at pains to associate the public generally with the Government's contribution to the conference. To that end he set up the four working parties to consider and report to my Department on public attitudes to the main subjects to be discussed at the conference. Recently, I am sorry to say, these working parties have attracted some ill-informed and rather silly criticism. Their work, which is well advanced, will be

of the greatest value to the Government in their preparations.
All the working parties have worked extremely hard, interviewing large numbers of people and making useful visits to all parts of the country. I do not know of any other nation which has set up such thorough means of carrying out the important task of testing what the public thinks about the environmental problems which will concern us at Stockholm. My right hon. Friend expects to receive the reports of the working parties in the next month or so. He has already had an advance copy of the first. Apart from their valuable work in preparing for Stockholm they will be of considerable general interest to the public and will be published.
Turning to the structure of the conference, this is necessarily complex, as is the case with most international conferences. Broadly speaking, it is to be arranged in six functional areas: human settlements and their problems; the management of natural resources; pollution of the environment; social and educational problems; the problems of less developed countries; and organisation. Each area of discussions is being considered in the preparatory meetings with a view to placing it on the agenda, taking account of the possibilities of action.
Broadly, I can see three main possibilities of action. First, those areas where precise international agreements might be reached at the conference; secondly, those areas where, if action cannot be agreed upon at the conference, at least the foundations for such international action can be laid so as to follow on from Stockholm; thirdly, that group of subjects where action at present, however much we talk about it, can go no further than an exchange of views.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden), who has attended many international conferences, will know that it is important to place some of the innumerable subjects on the agenda on one side so that there might be concentration on subjects in respect of which action is needed and possible. It will fall to the conference secretariat and to the Secretary-General, Mr. Maurice Strong, to organise this


massive documentation, and representatives of Governments, including our own, have been invited to comment on and help improve the draft documents, which we are already doing.
We have already received many enquiries concerning the composition of the British delegation. I am sorry that at this time I cannot be very specific about this matter. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will lead the delegation. There could be no better demonstration of the Government's commitment to the success of the Stockholm Conference than my right hon. Friend's personal decision to lead our delegation. Clearly he will need strong official and technical support which the Department of the Environment is uniquely fitted to provide.
I understand that, for practical reasons, there will have to be a limitation on the size of national delegations and perhaps even on the length of speeches, but I hope that within those constraints there will be a broadly-based representation from this country and that our contributions to the conference will be constructive, practical and achievable.
This, then, is no more than a progress report in response to the very well informed speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, East. I am not, unfortunately, in a position to forecast exactly what will happen at Stockholm, but the most active preparations are continuing and suggestions such as those made in the House today will help us to prepare our position papers. These are likely to take firm shape before long. The arrangements for the conference will be consolidated, I trust, at the next meeting of the preparatory committee scheduled for March. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Government will continue to exercise a powerful influence on the preparations for Stockholm, and I am confident that, under the leadership of my right hon. Friend, our delegation will do all in its power to ensure the success of the conference and, in so doing, to assist in improving the environment of mankind.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes to Five o'clock, till Monday 17th January, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 15th December.